


Of Olive Branches and Oaks

by shrikethrush



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anxiety, Depression, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 57,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23787763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrikethrush/pseuds/shrikethrush
Summary: Esspresso_depresso is a well known author online.  He's notable for his poetry and his knack for writing short stories that capture real world anxieties in fictional settings.Esspresso_depresso’s best friend is theloreax, a shy boy who pushed him to continue writing after his first short story.Connor Murphy is the school stoner, and he knows his parents believe he’ll never amount to anything.  Evan Hansen is so invisible that he doesn’t even get a fancy title like ‘school stoner’, and has lived his life with a parent who thinks more of him than he could ever become.It’s funny and it’s strange, some people manage to become friends twice over without even realizing it.
Relationships: Alana Beck & Connor Murphy, Connor Murphy & Zoe Murphy, Evan Hansen & Connor Murphy, Evan Hansen & Jared Kleinman, Evan Hansen & Zoe Murphy, Evan Hansen/Connor Murphy, Jared Kleinman & Connor Murphy
Comments: 258
Kudos: 494





	1. Prologue

The silence was deafening, but then, it always was. 

His thoughts spiraled as his heart thundered in his chest, the anticipation heightened by the clock tick-ticking away on the mostly-barren walls. 

He instinctively went to chew on the end of his nail, but found them already bitten to the quick. Rather than draw blood (and attention) he elected to chew on the inside of his cheek instead. 

The clock continued to tick-tick-tick away, the minutes fading together as he paced around the living room. This wouldn’t be _bad,_ right? Sure, his anxiety was skyrocketing, and _sure_ it sucked to be this nervous, but it was all paranoia, right? 

Even _he_ couldn’t fuck this up. It was simple. He didn’t even have to say much, he just had to open the door and force his mouth around the words that were almost certain to get caught in his throat. 

Music always helped, but of _course_ he managed to misplace his headphones, and if he played his music out loud he’d be judged for it for _sure._

_Thank you, have a nice evening! No, that sounds too stiff and adult. Thanks, have a good night?_

_Thanks, have a good night. Thanks, have a good night! Thankshaveagoodnight!_

The practiced words swirled around his head, his cheeks and ears burning a bright red as he pick-picked at his cast, the tick-ticking of the clock mimicking his heart. 

He contemplated turning on the TV for a moment, maybe something to take his mind off of his impending doom. No, no, his taste in shows would be judged too. There really wasn’t a single piece of him that was _normal._

He couldn’t tell if the pit growing in his stomach was hunger, fear, or some fusion of the two. 

It was usually some fusion of the two. 

The doorbell rang, and suddenly all of his thoughts careened to a stop, as if they were a car that collided at full speed with a tree. 

Gripping the money in his sweaty palm, he opened the door and tried to mask his anxiety. 

“Delivery for Evan Hansen?” The pizza man didn’t seem to be paying much attention, and for that Evan would be eternally grateful. 

“Yes,” he muttered, the metalic taste of blood leaking into his mouth due to the incessant biting of his cheek. 

“That’ll be $13.21,” the pizza man’s bland tone and tired demeanor was quickly lost when Evan shoved the twenty-dollar bill in his hands, rushing out a “ _Thankshaveanightgood!”_ as he grabbed the pizza, slamming the door closed and leaning against it as soon as it was shut. 

He closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing and silence the thoughts that ricocheted through his head. 

It was over. It was done. 

Now maybe he could have his night in with _The Sound of Music,_ and let the music pour over him and wash everything else away. 

Maybe the music could wash away all his flaws and imperfections, wash away the way his ears turned red at any mention of his name, wash away the panic and the flinches whenever someone moved too suddenly or spoke too loudly. Maybe the music could wash away everything that made Evan who he was, and leave behind someone better, just for a little while. 

Or maybe he’d just eat bad food and forgo sleep while he watched musicals and read shoddy books online to ignore his problems. Y’know, both are valid options. 

***

When people thought about depression, they tended to think about love, and loss, and regret. 

Fuck that. 

It was more like an angry pit that couldn’t be filled, no matter how hard Connor tried. It sucked away his energy, his hope, his happiness, even his sadness. There wasn’t anything left, not really. Nothing but hollow mimics of the things he used to feel. 

He used to like to read. He used to love to write. Nothing good, of course, just shoddy poetry and half-baked stories that he never found the motivation to finish. 

In recent months, he’d never even gotten the motivation to start. It would crumble and fall apart, like everything he tried always did. It would morph into something that would hurt someone, like everything he tried always did. He’d never show what he really thinks to anyone, because nobody would care what he thought, like they always didn’t. 

Connor used to think words were powerful. He used to believe that they could shape minds and hearts, and maybe someday he’d use his to do something meaningful. 

Fuck _that._

He couldn’t even reach his own family with his shitty, half-baked words. How could he hope to reach a stranger?

The thought still clung to him though, orbiting the raging hole and inching ever closer, but never quite reaching it. 

Reaching for his laptop, he gave a defeated sigh. 

_Am I really doing this?_

_Fuck, I’m really doing this._

He didn’t even know where he started, only that it poured out of him as quickly as the idea had come. Word after word strung together, loose threads of ideas and feelings that wove into some kind of shoddy-looking mimic of a story. 

Without thinking, he posted it and slammed the laptop shut. He rolled over, closing his eyes and trying to force himself to sleep. 

Instead of sleep he came upon memories of light and regret, haunted by shadows of what was and what could have been. 


	2. Be the Tree

When Evan looked at himself in the mirror, all he saw was angles. He was too pointy all over, too long in all the wrong spots and yet still somehow too short. Freckles dotted his entire body like dirt he could never wash off, and his eyes were such a tired shade of blue it wasn’t even worthy of description. 

There was this weird feeling of _this is who I am, this is my life, but is it supposed to be?_ He immediately tried to block it out, because that swirling mass of thoughts was not one he wanted to poke. Not today, not on the first day of his senior year. 

He pulled the heels of his hands over his eyes, letting himself sink into the quiet for a moment. 

The world was so _loud_ and so _fast_ and sometimes he just wanted _outoutout_ because it was _too much_ –

His off-brand phone buzzed, snapping him from what could easily have been a spiral into the part of his thoughts he’d intentionally ignored (as well as one can ignore their own mind) since earlier that summer. 

He blocked those thoughts out as well as he could, shoving them as far down in his brain as he could. 

**esspresso_depresso:** daily reminder if someone screws with you it is your god given right to beat their ass.

Evan opened Discord as quickly as he could upon seeing it was perhaps the only person who ever had or ever would call him ‘friend’. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek as he typed up a response, his anxiety easing up for just a second. 

**theloreax:** Bold of you to assume anyone would notice me enough to screw with me?

Evan grinned as he got an immediate response. 

**esspresso_depresso:** i told u to stop putting question marks at the end of everything you say like two months ago u anxious fuck

**esspresso_depresso:** stop second guessing yourself, or i will be forced to figure out who you are so i can go over there and give you a hug

And at the sounds of that Evan flushed red because the thought of someone who wasn’t his mom hugging him was strange and warm and soft and terrifying all at once. There wasn’t anyone he’d trust enough, except for _maybe_ espresso, but that was a terrifying box of feelings that could be but probably never _would_ be that he wasn’t gonna open. 

Honestly there was so much to unpack there that he’d just elected to throw away the whole suitcase. 

**esspresso_depresso:** srsly tho good luck on your first day of the new year, pls try to be a /little/ less anxious? at least to the point where you can stand up to that asshole ‘family friend’ you mention sometimes

**theloreax:** You too! Make good choices. Remember: you are a tree. 99% of a tree is dead at any time, and about 1% is alive, like the leaves and stuff?? Be that tree, use that 1% to stay alive. Or something, I don’t really even know, I just was trying to help.

**esspresso_depresso:** i swear to fucking god if you don’t stop second guessing yourself –

Today probably wasn’t going to be a good day. He was probably going to make a mess of himself and everyone around him, he’d have to correct the teachers on his name, he’d probably end up alone, again, as always. 

But maybe esspresso would be there, even if he wasn’t _there_ there. 

And for Evan, for now, that was enough. Because there was someone who cared what he thought. Because there was someone that thought he mattered. And even if esspresso was just doing it to be nice, he was. He was being _nice_ to Evan, because he noticed Evan needed it. He noticed Evan. 

That was all he’d ever wanted. 

***

Connor hated waking up in the morning. It was always the fucking _worst._ His mouth always tasted dry and bitter, which was uncomfortably similar to himself, so he tried to ignore it the same way he ignored all his problems. 

Today was especially bad, because he woke up to the sound of yelling. That was fairly normal, actually, but it was worse because it was fucking _early,_ and he’d been up talking to loreax until like, four. And considering it was like, seven now, that gave him about three hours of sleep. 

Which wasn’t _that_ bad by his insomniac standards, but it was still only like, three hours of sleep. So _not enough to deal with this bullshit._

He gulped down some water, trying to wash the sleep from his mouth and wipe it from his eyes. 

At that point, Connor gave in to his first impulse and checked his phone, ignoring the yelling of his sister and mother downstairs. He’d gotten some comments on one of his poems – _why the hell did people care enough to even acknowledge his writing_ – and tried his best to respond as nicely as possible. 

Which wasn’t like, super hard? Because he really appreciated it. He was just tired, and salty as _fuck,_ and he was worried about loreax to boot. That anxious fucker was going to be the death of him even if they never met. 

Speaking of him, they messaged for a couple minutes before Connor threw on some clothes. Nothing too out of his normal aesthetic – god forbid he tries to actually change, even now. That reputation of his would follow him to his grave. 

He put on a pair of headphones, blasting some bombastic classical music. There was nothing wrong with using Khachatorian’s _Masquerade Waltz_ to drown out the arguments of your family while finishing the milk in some cereal because that was the only palatable food in the entire goddamn house. 

And yes, Connor listened to classical music. Especially pieces like _Masquerade Waltz,_ which was loud, and happy, and sad all at once, a melancholic cacophony of noise that reminded Connor a bit of what he was, or what he could have been. Classical music told a story but left the words up to the listener, and Connor could appreciate that. Just because he had a punk aesthetic didn’t mean he liked that kind of music – which, to be fair, he did. Just not as much as he liked classical. 

Oh, and in the midst of his little tangent internally, his mother had started talking to him, and his sister was yelling. _Again._ Fucking lovely. 

He slammed his hands on the table, leaving his cereal half finished as he stood. He wouldn’t get a ride today, he’d just fucking walk to school. 

And if he accidentally skipped first period because he has a deep, burning hatred for English class? Well, wouldn’t that be _awful._

***

It was too loud. Everything in the hall was _too damn loud_ and he couldn’t block it out, nothing was working because every sound was too _sharp,_ or too _loud,_ or just too _much._

Evan was a jumpy mess, even if he shouldn’t have been, because he was a senior at this point and really should know what he’s doing. 

But he didn’t, and if he was this bad just walking through the halls that meant lunch was going to be _hellish_ because Mrs. Luxiel didn’t work there anymore, and she wasn’t going to be there to let Evan curl up between the rows of books that she kept in her classroom and read word after word about anything and nothing. Books were always an escape, and as an English teacher she understood that. 

But she was gone, and Evan would become one of those pathetic characters in movies that eats alone at lunch, or sits in the library. The bathroom was an invalid option because it always smelled of vape and always was permeated by TikToks. Jared wouldn’t sit with Evan, he didn’t even _like_ Evan –

And for a sickening moment, the world turned over as panic overcame him. It was like when he was young and would go out stargazing, and when the stars suddenly stopped feeling like up and instead felt like down, and he was hanging off the world by the sheer power of a force that he couldn’t understand at the time, and he could just imagine gravity falling away as he was released down and down and down into the stars, into the loneliness of space, where nobody would remember him, where he would never be heard again because sound _can’t_ travel. 

– it was an awful feeling that came over him. And he could feel it showing on his face, his hands shaking as he fidgeted with the edge of his polo, trying to just make it to his locker. 

Someone tapped on his shoulder, and Evan flinched as he turned, ready for Jared or someone else to say something awful, because why else would anyone notice him –

“Remember to fucking breathe, Hansen.” 

***

So Connor got to school on time, because even if he hated most English classes because they were taught _wrong_ he’d give this one a chance. Because maybe for once a teacher may understand that English is an art and is meant to be taught as such, because maybe for once a teacher may understand that English is about how it’s interpreted and not about what it _means,_ because for once a teacher may understand why words have value instead of just assuming that they do without understanding why.

He stalked through the halls, watching crowds part in his wake like he was fucking Moses or some shit. That was assuming he could remember his Biblical figures correctly from when his parents tried that whole ‘private Catholic school’ thing. It didn’t work, by the way. 

He studied the people as he passed. That’s what Connor tended to do – watch people, try to figure them out. He’d gotten fairly good at it, too, because people were _really_ fucking easy to read, especially in high school. 

And then he caught sight of a bo in a blue polo who looked just about ready to have a panic attack. Connor didn’t care, because why would he, but _damn_ the anxiety radiating off of this boy reminded him of the damn near palpable anxiety that radiated off of loreax whenever he was online, and he knew what he’d have wanted someone to do if his friend had been in that situation. 

So he rolled his shoulders back, gave a quiet sigh, and started walking toward the boy – Evan Hansen, if Connor could remember correctly. 

Connor tapped him on the shoulder, the little voice in the back of his head telling him that this was already a terrible idea. It was proven right when Evan flinched like he was about to be hit, and all of Connor’s words flew away as he realized just how _scared_ this kid was. 

“Remember to fucking breathe, Hansen.”

And with that Connor stalked down the halls again, his good deed for the week fulfilled. 

_Be the fucking tree, Murphy. All you need is that 1%._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my stars y’all are so much nicer than i deserve??? like by the stars i haven’t even been really editing this, and i have no real plan i just planned to yeet this into the oblivion and ignore it and people are being so nice
> 
> an actual cut interaction from the 4am conversation which was originally included  
> theloreax: So we know my misspelling of Lorax was intentional, because ‘Lore’ and I’m just a nerd, but was your misspelling of ‘esspresso’ intentional?  
> esspresso_depresso: wait i spelled esspresso wrong?  
> esspresso_depresso: fuck  
> esspresso_depresso: FUCK SOMEONE STOLE THE CORRECT SPELLING  
> theloreax: You’ve been absolutely destroyed


	3. The Life Cycle of a Star

Zoe didn’t hate her brother. 

Of course, their relationship was...hard to describe. She supposed he could be compared to something like a supernova. 

Once, there was a star, and it glittered brightly. It worked with other stars to form a constellation, and make a beautiful picture in the sky. But as that star aged, it stopped being able to work the way it once did. It grew and grew until it exploded, wiping out everything along with it, destroying the constellation and image that once was there. In its place was left a black hole that consumed everything in its wake, leaving nothing behind. 

Yes, her relationship with her brother could best be compared to a supernova. And Zoe resented him for it – resented him for something she  _ knew  _ deep down he couldn’t control, because mental illness isn’t something one  _ can  _ control. But she resented him for it anyway, because he wasn’t the only one with problems, and yet he was the only one anyone noticed. 

If Connor was a supernova, Zoe was a planetary nebula. That’s when a star has no energy left, and starts breaking apart into a complex structure. It was much more quiet, much more gradual than a supernova, and thus often got much less attention. 

But just because she got less attention doesn’t mean she gave less. If anything, Zoe had gotten so well attuned to the personalities and habits around her that she  _ knew  _ something had changed with Connor over the summer. 

He was always in his room, he actually could make it through dinner without screaming at their father, at one point he actually went on a walk in a state park and came home with like a million pictures of trees on his phone.  _ That  _ was a weird fucking day. 

And then this morning, he came down for school, and he wasn’t high? Which like, sure, isn’t that abnormal by most standards, but if Zoe was being honest most metrics didn’t account for the disaster of untreated mental illness that resided in each member of the Murphy household. 

So Zoe actually went and defended him against Larry. Which was, somehow, even weirder than the way she’d usually yell at Connor for like, finishing the milk or something. Because he didn’t even  _ notice  _ that Zoe was trying to help, because just like always he assumed the world was against him, and he dragged all the Murphys down with him, including Zoe. 

Stars, here she was, first day of school, and all she could think about was her older brother. She pulled into the parking lot with a hiss before plastering a smile on her face, waving to the captain of the dance team with a grin and bounding over to the jazz band. 

_ It’s fucking showtime.  _

***

Was Alana Beck a mess? 

Yes. 

Was Alana Beck stressed?

Yes.

Did any of that matter? No, because she was floating through the halls doing What She Needed To Do, and she was doing it with a smile on her damn face and fake confidence radiating off her. 

She figured she was sort of like a black dwarf, this theoretical stellar component she researched once. It was basically this idea that when a white dwarf (the end of an average star’s life cycle) cools down so much that it stops radiating light or heat, and it’s just sorta. There. 

Which was really quite reminiscent of Alana. She was once a star, and she had people in her orbit, but then she grew so full of herself she pushed them all away. And then, when she shrunk back into herself, they’d been burned so bad they refused to come back, so she stopped shining. And now nobody could see her, nobody at all. She was purely theoretical. 

And yeah, that sucked. But she didn’t have time to be upset, she had Things to do! She had to ensure there wasn’t a single thing that went wrong while she tried to get into the best college possible, and get a scholarship to boot, because like  _ hell _ her family could afford it without student loans. 

So she just had to, like, get through high school. And work her ass off, and maybe she’d get into a good college where she could work her ass off, and then she could get a well paying job that would probably not bring her any satisfaction, but she’d work her ass off there for money that would never make her happy. 

Easy, right? 

Like anything in life came easy. ‘If it’s easy it’s not worth doing,’ her dad always said. Even though most of Alana’s favorite things came easy to her. She remembered that she loved playing the ukulele, and how that came easy to her, and her family didn’t much like that. She knew she liked painting, especially landscapes, and her family liked that so much that they burned the passion right out of her. 

The other thing she had a passion for was language. Not writing, but learning, and understanding languages. She’d figured it out when she accidentally checked out a book in Portugese instead of Spanish for class, and had a great time trying to translate it just for fun. So she started picking up languages and words, and became quite good at it, and didn’t tell anyone. Because then she’d be doing it as ‘Alana Beck the Overachiever’ instead of just doing it because she loved it. 

And that made her stop loving it, invariably, every time. So she just decided it would be...better this way. Better to put on a mask when she wasn’t following her passions, better to seem like she didn’t care about anything at all except for college and admissions, because then nobody would see the kind of person she really was, and she couldn’t hurt them, and they couldn’t hurt her. 

So she’d duck through the hallways at school with the practiced confidence that only the truly insecure can pull off, she’d wreck the curve on every test, she’d have panic attacks at four in the morning when she’s struggling to finish an assignment the day it’s due, because that’s what she’s  _ supposed  _ to do. 

_ Smile, Alana.  _

_ Get your shit done.  _

***

Evan’s homeroom/first period class was English, and it was a disaster. This was, in large part, due to the fact that there was not assigned seating. For most people, that’s a huge plus, but Evan is not most people. 

A class without assigned seating is a class where he has to choose who he’ll irritate over the course of the year, who he can sit next to without pissing them off, who he can sit next to without getting the awkward ‘I’m waiting for my friend, sorry!’. 

And of course, his go-to seat in the back corner next to the window was stolen by  _ Connor Murphy,  _ who he never noticed and who never noticed him but still reminded him to breathe this morning for whatever reason. 

But the entire back row was still open, so three seats down from Connor is where Evan elected to sit, and soon he was type-typing out a conversation with esspresso. 

**theloreax:** School is a special hell sent to torture those of us cursed with anxiety and you’ll never convince me otherwise.

**esspresso_depresso:** no fucking kidding, i saw this kid almost have a panic attack in the hallway this morning and then he almost had a fucking stroke when he saw there wasn’t assigned seating. 

**esspresso_depresso:** the poor nerd has so much pent up anxiety, i swear he’s on his phone right now probably just writing nonsense in his notes app so he doesn’t have to look around the room 

**theloreax:** Be nice to the kid!! Anxiety fucking sucks and if he’s anything like me he’s probably like a milisecond from a panic attack >.>

**theloreax:** But be like, subtly nice? Because if he’s like he he’s also probably scared out of his mind of you and also like everyone else. 

**esspresso_depresso:** well that’s helpful, loreax

**theloreax:** I aim to please, esspresso. 

For a moment, Evan felt eyes peering into the side of his head, so he looked up for a moment. When he saw Connor Murphy looking right at him, his ears burned red and he went right back to his phone. 

**theloreax:** There is a kid!! In my class!!! Who is staring right at me!!!! I am P A N I C

**esspresso_depresso:** lmao chill they probably just are analyzing everyone in their class, i used to do that on the first day every year

**theloreax:** There is nothing about me to analyze!! Send help!!!

**esspresso_depresso:** y’see i would, but you’ve been insistent on this whole ‘anonymity’ thing, so whoops, i don’t know who or where you are, so i guess you’re on your own

**theloreax:** You! Are a big meanie >:(

**esspresso_depresso:** correct

**esspresso_depresso:** u didn’t realize sooner?

**theloreax:** You suck >>:(((

***

So. 

Connor was on a mission to befriend Evan Hansen. 

Because loreax had gotten to Connor, and convinced him that anxious people are like, really  _ really  _ anxious all the time, and need as much support as possible. And like, maybe Connor wasn’t the best support, but the only person who he’d ever seen around Evan was  _ Kleinman,  _ who clearly wasn’t gonna cut it. 

Maybe it was the broken arm that both loreax and Evan had, or the way they both crippling anxiety, but Evan seemed like. Really really similar to the kind of person Connor imagined loreax to be. 

And maybe there was that hopeful, childish part of Connor that still stuck around sometimes, reminding him of hope and light that told him that nobody deserves to be alone. 

So as old Russian waltzes played into his ears, he started studying his class while texting loreax. 

**esspresso_depresso:** okay so i’m gonna like. try to make friends with anxiety kid this year. because i promised you i’d try this year?

**esspresso_depresso:** but like, dealing with other people. especially those with anxiety. 

**esspresso_depresso:** walk me through what to do here. 

**theloreax:** Seek them out at lunch, maybe? Offer them a place to sit? 

**theloreax:** Idk man anxiety is a fucking  _ trip  _ and it’s different for everyone. But just like, try to ease them into it? And if they seem super uncomfortable, just like, leave them alone I guess?? But keep trying. 

**theloreax:** Unless you’re told to stop. Then like, full stop. 

**theloreax:** But that probably won’t happen?? 

**theloreax:** I don’t hecking know, I’m not the right person to go to for social advice. 

**esspresso_depresso:** Valid™

So. 

Connor began to hatch a plan. 

Because maybe the two school losers could be friends. Or something like that, anyway. 

Because maybe there was still a part of Connor that believed that nobody deserved to be alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! the girls make an entrance!!   
> i continue to project onto these characters way too much rip  
> also don't you just love how nobody is Okay™? because like. nobody is Okay™ at this point  
> but maybe they will be by the end?? idk i'm making this up as we go, i'm as clueless as y'all, this is an adventure all the way around


	4. Half-Loved

To you who I once loved and who once loved me –

I have nothing left to give. 

I gave all I was, and I was not enough –

not enough for you, bitter and half-loved. 

I could write to you each day –

for a moment, for a lifetime, for forever.

But nothing is enough for you –

not enough for you, bitter and half-loved. 

I do not love in halves,

but you do not love at all. 

So who found themselves half in the wrong?

Not  _ you _ , bitter and half-loved. 

I do not love in halves, yet you are bitter and half-loved.

When you took, you took half my love –

half my hope – 

half of all that I am. 

But I was never what you wanted, bitter and half-loved. 

And yet I paid the price. 

***

Nobody knew who Evan’s poems were addressed to, not one person in the entire world. He suspected that esspresso may have caught on, but that was because esspresso  _ knew  _ Evan, for better or worse. 

It didn’t take too much of a genius to figure out that Evan’s book of poetry was all addressed to himself, the letters that his therapist wanted him to write thrown to the wayside in favor of his actual feelings. 

In reality at this point he prewrote every letter that his therapist wanted him to write, and just changed a detail here or there to make it seem current. This way he would never end up failing to turn one in, but he still sorta did the assignment, he just never showed anyone he actually  _ knew _ . 

And poetry was sorta loreax’s thing. Not that loreax was well known, but what he  _ did  _ write was all poetry, because that was what he was comfortable with, because to him, poetry was soft. 

All of this is, of course, building to Evan’s anxiety ridden self not paying attention in class, writing some poetry, and then the sheer  _ anxiety  _ of ripping it off his desk and hiding it when  _ Connor Murphy  _ walked over to him after their shared fourth period class, cornering him before lunch. 

“Hey,” he waved, and something cold stirred in the pit of Evan’s stomach. 

_ This  _ had  _ to be a joke.  _

“I...uh...hi!” Evan greeted, picking at his fingernails as he looked everywhere but at Connor, because even if he wasn’t looking at Connor’s face he’d be looking at his intimidating black boots or his general demeanor, and Evan was scared enough. 

“So how’d you break your arm?” 

“I...uh...well I fell out of a tree, I –” Evan’s chest kept tightening and tightening, and he kept pick-picking at his fingernails –

“Will you stop that?” Connor snapped as he caught his wrists, pulling his hands apart. “You’re gonna fucking hurt yourself, dumbass.” 

“I – I just – I –” 

“Okay this was a bad idea, I’m gonna go,” Connor moved to leave.

“ _ Doyoumaybewannasignmycast? _ ” Evan blurted before he could think, his ears burning crimson as he spoke. “I just – I thought maybe – if you don’t want to it’s fine, no pressure, I just –”

“Do you have a Sharpie?” 

Evan shuffled through his bag for a moment, papers fluttering to the floor in a flurry as he accidentally knocked them out. He felt his fingers curl around a Sharpie and pushed it into Connor’s hands, watching the dark haired boy scribble his name on it with chunky letters. 

And then Evan was on the ground, scooping up the poems and papers that fell, trying his best to hide them from sight. 

But of course, of  _ course _ , Connor caught one. 

And his face contorted into something that frightened Evan enough to make him flinch. 

“I don’t know what you think you know,  _ Hansen,  _ but you leave him the fuck out of this. Whatever joke you and Kleinman were playing? Consider it played.” Connor stuffed the poem in his back pocket, stalking out of the room. 

The stinging red left Evan’s cheeks, leaving him ghostly white. 

_ Connor had taken one of his poems.  _

***

As soon as Connor left the room, regret clouded his features. He was sure it was just a coincidence, the poetry writing and the broken arm. 

He sighed, stalking down the halls until he was in the school courtyard. He clambered up a tree, sitting among its limbs and reading a book when his phone buzzed. 

**theloreax:** I’m dead

**theloreax:** I’ve actually died

**theloreax:** Rip loreax, he didn’t do much but now he does nothing at all

**esspresso_depresso:** are you okay?? you don’t sound okay

**theloreax:** I am most assuredly Not Okay™

**theloreax:** Someone saw one of my poems at school. 

**theloreax:** I’m stuck sitting with my family friend at lunch, I’m certain he hates me

**esspresso_depresso:** tbh fuck car insurance man?

**esspresso_depresso:** we can chat with each other if you want during lunch, i climbed a tree to avoid people so like

**theloreax:** I did that last fall!! But then some kid took my spot, so I ended up sitting in a teacher’s classroom instead. 

**esspresso_depresso:** f

**theloreax:** >:(

Maybe Russian waltzes and loreax could help calm Connor down. And maybe once calm, Connor could figure out how to string together an apology. 

***

Jared was insanely cool, and he was also insanely complicated. 

He was anxious, but he wasn’t the same brand of anxious as his friend Evan Hansen. 

Yes, Jared thought of Evan as a friend. As uncool and anxious as Evan Hansen was, he was still the kid that Jared had known and watched grow up since like, forever. And what was that whole thing in  _ Ender’s Game  _ again? Orson Scott Card’s whole theme of ‘if you truly know someone, in the moment you understand them completely, you love them’ or something? 

Well if there was one person who really knew Evan Hansen, it was Jared. Because contrary to the school’s belief, Jared wasn’t  _ that  _ much of an asshole. 

Jared knew Evan let go over the summer. He was surprised about it, sure. He was hurt that when he’d fallen, Evan hadn’t called him. But Jared had known Evan for a _ long _ time, and knew that the last time Evan had properly fallen out of a tree was in fifth grade. 

He felt guilty about it, too. Because Jared was a shit friend, and he knew it. 

He invited Evan to sit with him and his other friends at lunch, because he worried about Evan going off and sitting in a teacher’s classroom again, and spiraling, and this time ‘falling’ out of a tree and it  _ working.  _

And Jared eased up on the jokes, too. Because his comments about ‘car insurance’ were mostly just that – jokes. He’d been paying his own car insurance basically forever. Jared thought that if he prodded Evan hard enough, one day Evan may stand up for himself, and Jared was determined to figure out how to make that happen, because like hell his anxious best friend was going to go to college without knowing how to say no to people. 

And besides, if it ruined their friendship in the process, that was...fine. Because Evan needed better friends than Jared anyway. Friends more like him. 

And if Jared happened to get a little lonely at lunch, happened to get a little sad because his friend was on his phone instead of talking to him? 

Repress those feelings, repress them all the way to the darkest part of Jared’s mind, banish them to the fucking shadow realm. 

Because someone who could make Evan smile that sort of soft smile, the way he looked at his phone? They were a better friend than Jared ever could be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i speak from experience when i say that the friends you make online are actually hard to recognize in real life because you usually don’t even think about the coincidences. however, connor is being particularly dense. connor is a chronic dumbass mom friend who is constantly tired of the bullshit and you cannot convince me otherwise. also jared is a sad boi and probably ooc as hell
> 
> also y’all are? so much nicer than i deserve, holy shit. i literally started this on a whim and just sorta went with it, i’ve never published a story online before but y’all are so nice anyway??? also sorry in advance for the erratic update schedule?? i’d explain it but that gets into some personal details y’all don’t wanna know, so imma probably just try to update this every weekday until it’s finished~~!


	5. Pie and Panic

Evan had a nasty habit of stress baking. 

Stress baking was not, itself, inherently bad. However, thirteen pies and seven batches of cookies later, he was starting to see the drawbacks. In a single afternoon he’d neglected all his school work and blazed through his allotted ingredients for the month, which was frankly to be expected after the kind of day he’d had, with the sort of conversation he’d had with Dr. Sherman after school. 

Evan...did not want to think about that. He didn’t like the thought of someone knowing that much about him, even if they were paid to keep it a secret. 

So he baked. It was easy to lose himself in the flow of ingredients, reaching for their familiar place in the pantry as easy as breathing. It was easy to lose himself in the smell of warm vanilla, of butterscotch, and cinnamon, and if he was feeling daring, sometimes even blueberry. 

He’d often play musicals from his phone while he did so, singing along if he was home alone. He could lose himself in it, the same way he could lose himself in reading and writing, the same way he could climb a tree and forget who he was. 

But no matter what, he’d end up like this, because no matter where he went or what he did he was  _ Evan Hansen,  _ Evan who can’t even think his own first name without spiraling, Evan who only goes out when Jared demands he does, Evan who always ends up alone, because maybe that’s what Evan deserves. 

He let out a shaking breath, trying to steady his thoughts. If he started spiraling, he’d end up thinking about all the things he hates about himself, and end up burning the lemon pie that was in the oven. 

He knew well enough that he hated himself, so there was no point ruminating on it, and he had a lemon pie to finish anyway. 

There were baked goods strewn across the kitchen, with shoddily-decorated cookies and more pies than any household should have at any given time. He already knew he’d end up dragging at least one pie and a batch of cookies to throw at Jared tomorrow, because maybe then his family-friend would want to stick around him a little more. 

And y’know repressing his self-hating thoughts didn’t really work all that well, because now he’s just sitting in his kitchen watching a pie bake, alone. 

That overpowering weird feeling that’s  _ warm  _ and  _ soft _ and  _ terrifying  _ came back with a vengeance, because all he really wanted was a hug, and that was really weird, wasn’t it? 

And he couldn’t even talk to esspresso right now, because esspresso was probably sick of him and his first day of school anxieties, and nobody should be forced to endure pure and unrestricted  _ Evan  _ all the time. 

So Evan’s phone was upstairs so Evan didn’t make an impulsive choice and start annoying esspresso. 

And Evan was alone with the smell of pie and the sting of loneliness. 

He actually believed he deserved it. 

*** 

**esspresso_depresso:** you haven’t said anything in like four hours

**esspresso_depresso:** and that’s not counting the hour you were in therapy

**esspresso_depresso:** so imma guess you’re having an anxiety spiral? 

**esspresso_depresso:** so like if you don’t wanna answer because ur upset, fuckin don’t

**esspresso_depresso:** but like??? remember that u don’t suck

**esspresso_depresso:** and don’t

**esspresso_depresso:** don’t do anything stupid

***

Connor was not having a good night. Of that Zoe was certain. 

She realized this the instant she realized she wasn’t hearing him yell, or break things, but that he was still at the house. He was just pacing around his room, the calm before the storm, the pressure building and building until it exploded. 

So she did what she always did – hiding up in her room, browsing everything from Reddit to Tumblr. 

Eventually she heard a mumbled ‘fuck it’ from next door, and Connor climbing out the window. 

Well. That was going to end well. 

***

The crumpled poem that Alana had found on the floor was flat against her desk as she stared at it, her mind turning. 

It may have slipped too close to what she wanted, to what she was passionate about, but,  _ but – _

– maybe she wasn’t the only one who needed a poetry club, a place to express her feelings and love of language. 

Maybe,  _ maybe,  _ she’d even keep it a secret. A super top-secret poetry club, invitation only. 

_ Maybe.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do i actually have a plan for this book and the direction it's going in now? mayhaps  
> sorry this was short af. today has been. A Day. anyway have a good day, make good choices, remember you are loved and appreciated uwu


	6. In Dreams

“What the fuck do you want?” Connor snarled, his body careening toward Alana with enough fury and force to have scared away anyone else. 

Alana was not anyone else. 

“I’m making a secret poetry club at school. It’s for the people who don’t quite – er – fit. Invite who you want. Come.” 

The wind howled on the bridge, the stars flickering overhead as a cloud passed over the moon. 

“And why the hell are you inviting me?” 

“Because you’re smarter than you want people to think, and I think that deep down you have something to say. I don’t think you know how to say it yet, but maybe this could help you figure that out.” 

Alana was nervous. She could feel ice crawling through her bloodstream, something cold and angry crawling into her throat, shifting like vines as she felt it threaten to choke out her words. Still, she held her ground. Because this could do something good for someone who needed it, and Alana maybe needed it too. 

“Invite Hansen,” Connor snapped out, his voice low. “The kid has anxiety, and he writes poetry. I saw during class today.” 

_ Interesting,  _ Alana reflected. 

“You invite him, then, if you two are friends.” 

“We’re not friends. He’d never listen to what I have to say, anyway. Convince him to come. Even if it means dragging Kleinman along, or – whatever. He just seems like he’s the kind of person who’d need this. Not me.” 

“Come to the first meeting. We’re holding it in under the stage in the auditorium, there’s a secret room for props that’s gone unused for like, several years. I’m working on an initiative to convert it to a secret club room.” 

“I’ll go to one meeting. Then you leave me alone.” 

“Deal.” 

They shook hands, leaving the bridge in the night. Neither mentioned why they were there, and neither asked. 

***

Evan was falling. 

He was falling forever, because the bottom was never there, and all he could do was reach up, up toward the unbroken branch, up toward the Sun as the air drained from his lungs from the force and speed of his fall. 

Every now and then the piercing pain of a branch scraping his skin flickered by, the sound of snapping branches and broken bones (funny and sad how similar they are) echoing in his ears. 

Eventually, the voices started. His mother, Jared, Connor, everyone he’d spoken to over the course of the day. They weren’t even saying anything coherent, they were just  _ whispers,  _ and the echoes of what could have been was much scarier than what was. 

So Evan squeezed his eyes shut, the inky darkness filled with whispers and snaps almost as heartbreaking as the endless sky, and –

suddenly as falling asleep, he was awake. Tears welled up in his eyes as he chewed on the inside of his cheek, squeezing his pillow tighter as he tried to drown out his own thoughts, the quiet somehow worse than the whispers and snaps. 

Because here, on this night, alone in his house, Evan was alone with the person he hated most. 

***

Jared was awake, playing video games until dawn as always. He hated sleeping. Sleeping was vulnerable, sleeping was a time when you were unaware of your surroundings. Jared knew he didn’t have long to be alive on this earth, not in the grand scheme of things, and he didn’t want to be asleep for half of it. 

So he would live forever this way, if he had to. Barely scraping by on caffeine and twenty minutes of sleep, browsing Reddit, and Tumblr, and playing whatever this week’s MMORPG was. 

Online, you’re never alone. Online, you’re one of millions of people, and you can  _ be  _ millions of people. It’s a socially anxious extravert’s dream. 

And if he stays awake, the nightmares of his best friend falling won’t come. That’s pretty nice too.

***

Zoe loved the stars. She always had. They were predictable in their own way, falling into patterns that were as easily recognized as the stitches on the quilt she’d had since she was six, or the freckles on the back of her arm. They weren’t something she’d always paid attention to, but she cared enough to  _ know  _ them, because they were part of her, and she was part of them. 

She thought it was romantic, as a kid. That the same sky could be seen thousands of miles apart, that the same constellations could be seen across the whole Northern Hemisphere, and that in the Southern Hemisphere people saw some of the same stuff rearranged. 

Zoe had dreamed of living along the equator, as a kid. She’d thought it would be cool, to be able to see all the stars in the sky, living and dead, watching them as they went on and on and on into infinity, to be part of it. 

But Zoe wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d grown up, and she knew that all of her dreams and romantic ideas were just that – dreams and ideas. In dreams you can get lost in thoughts, ignoring the fact that you had a broken brother that was ripping the family apart, ignore the fact that your family would’ve been self destructing anyway, ignore and repress until there was nothing left. 

But Zoe had to wake up from her dreams, face reality. So she’d draw her curtains at night, and refused to see the stars she’d once so dearly loved, refusing to point out the constellations and the memories. 

And if her curtains peaked open just enough that she could see a couple of stars? Well, that was a  _ terrible  _ coincidence, wasn’t it? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *says i'm going to update this every weekday*  
> also me: *is murdered by my 5 ap classes immediately after and fails to update*


	7. Mizar and Alcor

I will never forget,

alone with all I failed to be,

my heart was awoken.

You cared,

I was not alone. 

We have never met,

but I carry you with me. 

Through the words that you have spoken 

unasked and unanswered 

I am not alone. 

Through these halls I walk alone,

but I carry you with me. 

Because you are a part of me

because you are with me

in every last word. 

***

Connor crumpled up his piece of paper as soon as he was done writing, his ears glowing red as he shoved the poem into his bag. Because fuck feelings of vulnerability, that’s why. 

He didn’t want to come to school, but he owed at least that much to Alana, with her stupid secret poetry club at lunch and stupid  _ Evan Hansen  _ with his stupid anxiety and stupid similarities to loreax. 

Loreax, who apparently had an anxiety spiral so bad last night that he ended up stress baking until midnight. Connor’s phone had imploded with pictures of pies from forty different angles, cookies in the shape of and decorated to look like  _ fucking trees _ , and a particularly impressive cake that looked like an axe with a Lorax mustache and stupid cartoon eyes. 

It reminded Connor of the fact that, to loreax, he technically ‘didn’t count as people’ anymore, which is basically an anxious person’s declaration of a ride or die friendship. It was sort of a mutual thing in all honesty, no matter what mood he was in loreax could help. 

Well. Usually. 

Not always. Because fuck mental health, that’s why. 

And also while he was at it, fuck poetry, and fuck writing, and just fuck the universe? Because Connor was just. Really not feeling it today. 

Or any day, but that was probably just the depression kicking his ass. Assuming, y’know, that depression was what was wrong, because  _ fucking Larry  _ kept the entire malestrom of Murphy Mental Illness™ untreated and unchecked. 

And maybe before he wouldn’t have cared. But somewhere along the way, Connor had hurt Zoe. And maybe it wasn’t physical, but  _ fuck,  _ he noticed the way she flinched and hid when he got too loud. And he hated Larry for letting it happen, and he hated himself for doing it, for hating the one person who maybe  _ might  _ have still cared. 

And as suddenly as he strung his thoughts together,  _ there  _ it was. A spark in his chest, the desire, the  _ need  _ to create and go on creating forever. The call to pull out a laptop and type until ten-thousand pages were full, the desire to pull a pen out and write and write and never stop, to block out the world by making one of his own, constructing a house of words that nobody could enter without his permission. 

_ Because words are what we are. Words define us. My word is, therefore I am, and so long as my words exist, I am eternal.  _

_ I am my words, my words are my bond, my words give me meaning. _

_ I am, I am, I am.  _

***

Mizar and Alcor,

forever in orbit,

six in two,

easy and impossible to see all at once.

Alcor is the death star,

Its name is ‘forgotten’.

As it spins around Mizar,

forever,

it dies without a name to memory. 

Mizar is a bright star,

Its shining exterior a cover.

Four stars hide beneath its surface,

only a mask to protect the truth,

The light it once had dulled by the earth.

Mizar and Alcor,

You and I,

forever in orbit,

forever a million miles apart.

***

Damn Evan’s inability to say no. Damn it straight to hell. 

Because of  _ course  _ Alana bounced up to him this morning at school, asking him to go to some secret club at lunch, and like, how could he say no? That would be  _ confrontation,  _ and it’s not like Evan could handle  _ that.  _

Esspresso would be so disappointed. 

Speaking of esspresso, last night after his nightmare he resolved to bake an entire Lorax themed cake. Specifically, an axe with a Lorax mustache and eyes, because that was some sweet irony, and also Evan was running on like twenty minutes of restless sleep and pure anxiety, you can’t trust him to make good decisions like that. 

And so he blazed through his emergency cake making supplies, creating an abomination in the process. That damn cake was going to haunt him to his grave. 

“Please? I...I have cookies! I will...I will literally give you...uh...forty cookies if you’re willing to...if you’re willing to come to one meeting! Just so I...just so I don’t have to seem pathetic turning up alone?” Evan begged. 

“What type of cookie?” Jared tilted his head slightly, as if in thought. He already had made his mind up, but he wasn’t telling  _ Evan  _ that. 

“My...er...my infamous chili-chocolate tree cookies?” 

“Damn, rough night?”

“You...you have no  _ idea.”  _

“Alright, I’m in. For  _ one  _ meeting. And  _ forty-five _ cookies.” 

“D-Deal!” 

***

Alana was proud. She’d convinced Connor Murphy, Evan Hansen _ ,  _ and Zoe Murphy to all turn up to her first meeting. The only other person who she thought to maybe invite was Jared, but she figured that he and Evan, like always, would be a matched set. 

The club was an odd bunch, and it was strange to incorporate both Murphys, but Alana wanted this club to be somewhere that anyone who needed a place to fit could go. And Alana saw that in everyone she invited – except for maybe Zoe, who had a place that she fit, but didn’t seem to like it very much. 

And it was going to be  _ perfect.  _ Alana had finagled a way into getting a couch into the ancient prop room, and had strung up lights all around the musty area. The walls were peeling, but Alana figured they could get it repainted eventually, or cover it up somehow. 

Or – Alana’s favorite idea – if they handwrote all their poems, they could stick them up on the wall, glue them into place as an immortal memory of their words, that they were there, that they  _ mattered.  _

If she could get the others to agree, that was. 

She wanted to have books everywhere, have the room accumulate that library smell. She wanted it to feel cozy, and warm, and old, and something just a bit magical for those who could see it just right. 

Alana was going to start a  _ fucking secret poetry society.  _

And like  _ hell  _ anyone was gonna get in her way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> has my obsession with astronomy gotten through to you all yet?? hahaha not even close just you wait until i find an excuse for someone to go off about my favorite constellation  
> also!! fuckin leave it to me to find a way to incorperate fucking loraxe into this story, i regret every life choice i’ve ever made  
> also also!!!! next chapter, poetry club, get ready for some uhhhhh plot  
> aka the boys reading love poems to each other for about a million chapters without realizing the person they wrote the poem to is in the room because we got a couple of chronic dumbasses on our hands >.>


	8. Postmeridie

Evan nibbled on a cookie, trying desperately not to fidget or pick at anything, because every time he did he was shot a glare from Connor. And every time Connor glared at him, Jared nudged Connor with his foot. Which caused Zoe to glare at Jared. Which caused Alana to glare at the whole group. 

So Evan tried desperately not to fidget as he sat on the arm of a worn orange couch, his knees pulled to his chest as he glanced around the age-worn room. Jared sat beside him on the couch itself, and connor sat on the floor leaned against the worn orange fabric. Zoe sat beside Jared, the space in the couch between them sort of an ocean between the groups. At the front of the room stood a slightly irritated but mostly excited Alana. 

“Welcome to the first meeting of this top secret poetry club! Obviously, this club is dedicated to poetry. More accurately, I suppose, it’s dedicated to expressing your thoughts and feelings through writing, because written and spoken word are two of the most powerful mediums that humans have to our advantage.”

“I love words, and I hate math. I’ve learned several languages because I thought it would be fun, and I don’t like people knowing that I can read, write, and understand several languages fluently. My family wants me to be an overachiever, to dedicate my entire school life  _ to  _ school. My family wants me to go into a STEM field because I have  _ some  _ aptitude for it, and because going into STEM as a woman who’s okay at it apparently looks better than going into linguistics as a woman who is fairly talented. I don’t have friends because ‘time spent making friends will waste time you could’ve spent studying’,” Alana took a breath, biting her bottom lip. 

“But honestly? Screw that. I’ve invited you all here because you all seem like nice, good people who may’ve lost your way, or not been able to find the place where you ‘fit’. And maybe if we can make friends with each other, and grow together, we could ‘fit’ together?” 

“Zoe, you’re imploding. You’re falling apart inwardly, and anyone who pays attention could see it. You’re part of the ‘popular group’ but you’re also not really, because they’re all closeted geeks who sit together and play MMOs on the weekends, and you’re not. They like you well enough, but you’re not the kind of person who’d go to a Homecoming afterparty where they sit and discuss the plot and symbolism of some anime or another.” 

“Evan...you’re anxious as hell. Anyone could see that, if you ever even let people notice you. But you don’t. You’d rather nobody see you at all because at least then they don’t hate you, but Evan...you need to let people in. Let people be your friend.” 

“Step off,” Jared narrowed his eyes as Evan fidgeted again, the crumbs of his cookie a stark contrast to the orange fabric that he was pick-picking at now, trying to think of everything but his red ears and the tears that were threatening the corners of his vision. 

Connor stood up in a huff, “Alright, that’s enough–”

“Look I – I’m sorry,” Alana let out a breath and sunk into herself. For the first time that anyone present had seen, she was slouching and acting like an actual human being. “I’m not good at – at any of this? I want to be. But I’ve not had friends since elementary school, because that was back when grades didn’t matter and my parents didn’t care where I was spending my time. I’ve been told my whole life to focus on the facts, that if you tell people the facts and the truth that the rest will follow, but I guess that’s not really true, is it?” 

“No,” Zoe’s voice was quiet. “No, it’s not. If people wanted the truth, then nobody would ever be happy. It would be living one’s whole life with their mistakes thrown in their face.” 

“And – and you’re wrong, by the – by the way!” Evan stumbled out. “You – you say you haven’t had friends since – since elementary, right? But – but we’re right here. And we’re – we’re in this club, and we may as well all be friends – right?” 

“Fuck it,” Jared sighed. “Why not?” 

The Murphy siblings glance at each other and shrug. 

Alana pressed her hands to her face, which was hot with emotion. She felt her cold fingers cover her eyes, cooling the burning tears that threatened to leak out. 

“Alrighty,” she looked up, a fire in her gaze as she held the others in her sight. “Let’s do this. The first meeting of the Subterranean Sonnetists is in session!” 

“...please tell us that is  _ not _ our name,” Connor deadpanned. 

“I kinda like it,” Jared gave the kind of grin where everyone just  _ knew  _ he was mocking it. 

“S–Subterranean?” Evan tipped his head to the side?

_ “Sonnetists?” _ Zoe’s voice was full of such deadpan judgement it gave Evan whiplash. 

“We...can work on it,” Alana chuckled awkwardly. 

The bell rang overhead, and everyone started to pack up their stuff. 

“Bring a poem next time! Or a short story, or anything! And if you want, we’re gonna each start gluing our poems up on the wall when we’re done sharing them with the group – a permanent reminder that we were here, and that our words matter! So make sure you write it on an unimportant piece of paper! And remember, we meet every other day – so not tomorrow, but the day after, be here at lunch!” 

Varying noises of agreement sounded from all over the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! the subterranean sonnetists meet at last (actual name pending)  
> we've been building to this chapter for a while and it's so shortttt i'm sorry  
> i swear once i get my laptop back and can type with like? a keyboard? and not the stupid 3ds i have to use to read and write right now??? the quality will actually be Reasonable™  
> not good. because like. this entire book and concept is a dumpster fire. but like, Reasonable™ and i'll go back and edit all of this  
> anyway thanks for reading, you are loved and appreciated, have a good day and take care of yourself!!


	9. Midnight

**theloreax:** esspresso!! 

**theloreax:** You have not responded, therefore it is my right...

**theloreax:** ...to spam you until you reply!

**theloreax:** esssssssspressssssssooooooooooo

**esspresso_depresso:** well *somebody* is in a good mood

**theloreax:** I made! A friend!! Well actually probably a bunch of friends.

**theloreax:** But! There are people!! Who actually talk to me in the halls?

**esspresso_depresso:** other than car insurance man?

**theloreax:** Other than car insurance man!!

**esspresso_depresso:** fukging fINALLY

**esspresso_depresso:** about damn tIME

At this Evan giggled, curling farther under his blankets as he lay on his side, typing away into his phone. It was late at night, but he had floated through the rest of his day, because at least for once people liked him. 

**theloreax:** Lmao your spelling continues to suck

**theloreax:** But this is!! So exciting!!!

**esspresso_depresso:** literally all you’ve ever had to do is talk to people

**esspresso_depresso:** how many ways can i tell you that yoU ARE LIKABLE

**theloreax:** So far you’ve tried approximately thirteen ways?

**theloreax:** But it’s not true sooooooo

**esspresso_depresso:** I WILL FIGHT YOUR SELF ESTEEM

**esspresso_depresso:** SQUARE UP LOREAX’S BRAIN

**esspresso_depresso:** STOP BOTHERING ANXIETY MAN

**theloreax:** Is...is that really what you called me?

**theloreax:** ‘anxiety man?’

**esspresso_depresso:** only after i literally offered to fight your brain for your honor

**esspresso_depresso:** you’re welcome

**theloreax:** In the time that I have known you you have also offered to fight:

**theloreax:** -Car insurance man

**theloreax:** -Everyone who’s contributing to deforestation

**theloreax:** -That one cranky librarian from my school

**theloreax:** -The very concept of time and space

**theloreax:** -God

**theloreax:** -Poem stealing boy’s ego

**theloreax:** -And my self esteem

**theloreax:** This is just another addition in the series of deathmatching incorporeal and potentially unreal objects. 

At this Connor bit back a laugh, rolling his eyes as he worked at his desk. Poems were scribbled all across the multiple pieces of paper he had strewn across the room, concepts for short stories and dialogue hiding in every corner. He was typing away at his laptop, switching between his current story and talking to loreax. 

**esspresso_depresso:** that’s Valid™

**esspresso_depresso:** but man today must be like ultimate friend making day

**esspresso_depresso:** because i joined a poetry club and somehow ended up ‘friends’ with all of them

**esspresso_depresso:** though i only really like anxiety boy and alana, the girl that runs the thing

**esspresso_depresso:** actually i like my sister too, the only one i don’t like is fucking anxiety boy’s guard dog

**esspresso_depresso:** he’s not nice? even to anxiety boy???? but someone else tries to say something to anxiety boy and he’s at their throat

Evan’s eyes went wide. 

_ Connor Murphy is fucking esspresso. _

It was the only option that made sense. Similarities clicked into place, behaviors and habits that esspresso had suddenly making a lot more sense. 

_ I can’t tell him. How the hell would that go? _

_ He saw one of my loreax poems and about lost it, if he knew…? _

_ I’d lose Connor  _ and  _ esspresso. _

**esspresso_depresso:** loreax? are you alright? 

**theloreax:** Yeah, I’m fine!

**theloreax:** One of my pies was burning >.<

**theloreax:** So you joined a poetry club? About time!

***

“How the hell does one go about writing a  _ poem _ ?” Jared muttered, scowling at his scribbled out notebook. 

“Determination,” Alana’s voice crackled through his phone, which was on speaker. “But seriously, it’s different for everyone? Just roll with it. And again: how did you get this number?” 

“Determination,” Jared would’ve given a childish grin if Alana had been present, but instead he gnawed on the back of his pen. “Seriously though, I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” 

“Guess we’ll both be wondering forever,” Alana spun around in her chair, desperately needing a break from her AP Chem homework. “Also, I have a question about our AP Computer Science homework and we all know you’re the top of that class –”

“Nope!” Jared chirped. “No homework! You need a break. What’s your address?” 

“You want my...address?”

“We’re going to get ice cream, nerd. You said yourself during the meeting of the–” Jared sighed “–Subterranean Sonnetists, you’ve had your whole life scheduled and focused on academics. You and me are going out for midnight ice cream, and we may even drag Hansen and the Murphys into it if we can convince them.” 

Alana whispered the address into her phone, and Jared explained that he had the Murphy’s address from a group project he did with Zoe years ago. 

That was how, the next thing they all knew, the entire crew was stuffed into the back of Jared’s car as he drove to the nearest ice cream place. 

“I think A La Mode is open right now?” Zoe yawned. 

“It is,” Connor nodded. 

“H-How do you know that?” Evan stuttered. 

Connor gave a dangerous grin, and Evan turned back forward. 

Alana fidgeted in her seat, “And you promise you’ll help me with my AP Computer Science work if –”

“Yes, yes,” Jared rolled his eyes. “You gotta live a little!” 

“But...but what if we don’t w-want to live?” Evan deadpanned, which caused actual laughter from Connor and Jared. 

“Is that Evan Hansen I hear? Being  _ sarcastic?  _ Alert the presses! This is a big day!” 

“Why are you so much of an asshole to him, anyway?” Zoe asked through another yawn. 

“Yeah, why are you such an asshole?” Connor asked, tilting his head slightly. 

“Would you look at that! We’re here!”

“This conversation isn’t finished!” Zoe challenged. 

“Perhaps we should push back the next meeting of the Subterranean Sonnetists and replace it with a meeting where we psychoanalyze Jared to answer the question of why he is an asshole?” Alana gave a grin as she stepped out of the car, and Jared gave one right back, hoping to whatever deity exists that his red cheeks could easily be blamed on the cold and not the fact that he’s being called out. 

“Alright, what flavors is everyone getting?” Connor asked.

“P-Peach!” Evan stuttered out. 

“Of course,” Jared snorted. “I’ll take butter pecan!”

“You heathen,” Zoe stared Jared dead in the eyes. “Mint chocolate chip, please!” 

“Vanilla is fine,” Alana shrugged. 

“Vanilla with rainbow sprinkles,” Connor challenged. “You can’t be bland. It’s not allowed.” 

“Vanilla with rainbow sprinkles it is, then. And you?” 

“...Cotton candy,” Connor mumbled. 

“I’ve got this,” Jared offered. “Since I’ve dragged us all out here and all.” 

Evan shrugged, used to Jared doing things like midnight ice cream runs, and after faint protests they’d all piled into a booth, ice cream in hand. 

“So. This is a thing now?” Alana asked. 

“This is very much a thing, yes.” Jared nodded. “At random I will now appear at your house to carry you off on grand adventures of ice cream and – where are some of the other places we’ve gone?” 

“You – you took us stargazing once...and...and oh! Do you remember when you took us to the abandoned middle school?” 

“Yes!” Jared cackled. “We were looking for ghosts – well, I was – and you were so nervous the entire time, looking out to make sure we didn’t get caught!” 

“And I ended up saving your ass when people actually showed up, didn’t I?” 

“Of course you did,” Jared rolled his eyes. “You’ve always had more sense than I did, and you’ve always been better at stealth games than me.” 

“It’s why I’m the reigning champion whenever we go head to head and you  _ know  _ it,” Evan scoffed as the others watched this back and forth like a tennis match. 

“Except for in fighting games! I can beat you in Smash Bros any day of the week!”

“Really? Because I distinctly remember last time we played you got distracted by the fact that a song from Rent was playing and you started crying over the fact that your favorite character was dead.” 

“Did you really need to bring that up?” Jared’s cheeks flared red. 

“So  _ that’s _ why you two are best friends!” Something clicked in Zoe’s head. “When you’re not at school you’re a totally different person, holy shit Evan!” 

“It’s – it’s not about school? Uh...not um...not exactly?” Evan tucked into himself again. 

“Anxiety,” Connor rolled his eyes. “It’s because they’ve known each other forever. He’ll warm up to us eventually.” 

“Right! Which is why I propose that – other than Zoe, who has somewhere she needs to be – we should start sitting together in classes and at lunch! So we can get to know each other better,” Alana smiled. 

“It doesn’t need to have a reason, dumbass. We can just like, be friends? And sit together? Like normal friends do?” Connor bumped Alana’s shoulder with his own. 

“When we’re all together, we gotta give off a color-coordinated gang vibe like the Heathers,” Zoe demanded. 

“Evan is clearly blue,” Jared rolled his eyes. 

“I’ve got purple!” Zoe spoke before anyone could get a word in edgewise. 

“Green?” Alana shrugged. 

“I’m definitely black,” Connor scoffed. 

“Says the boy eating cotton candy ice cream. But I’ll be red,” Jared offered. 

“We need polos in each of our colors, and we need to have a dramatic walk down the hall where we’re all dressed in our own color and looking coordinated as  _ fuck, _ ” Zoe demanded. “Let me have my one musical moment.” 

“As long as Evan vows to sing the opening to Candy Store, because honestly that would make this entire experience complete.” Connor snickered. 

“No, Evan would be Duke, not  _ Chandler.  _ Clearly  _ I’d  _ be Chandler,” Jared scoffed. “And Connor can be Mac, I guess.” 

“Lifeboat is a mood,” Connor licked his ice cream. 

“Lifeboat  _ should not be a mood! _ ” Evan squeaked. 

“If you’ve got crippling mental issues and should be seeing a therapist, raise your hand,” Zoe deadpanned. 

Everybody around the table raised their hand. 

“I think we all see Lifeboat as a mood,” Zoe shrugged. 

“That’s not okay?” 

“ _ We’re  _ not okay,” Alana shrugged. “But nobody is by my estimation, so we’re actually doing alright.”

“Jared once ate a bath bomb on a dare to try to make friends, there’s nothing alright about that,” Evan deadpanned. 

“It was a Lush bath bomb! Those are the high quality, probably-won’t-kill-you kind!” Jared defended. 

“It was a _bath bomb,_ ” Connor blinked. “Who cares what kind?” 

“I mean, the quality at least matters a bit?” Alana shrugged. 

“I didn’t come out here to be attacked about the quality of my bath bombs!” 

“We...were only talking about  _ one  _ bath bomb,” a smile snaked onto Zoe’s face. “You’ve eaten more than one!” 

“No I haven’t!” Jared sounded like a child trying to cover up a mistake. “Besides, if you think that’s bad, you should hear about Ev –”

“I gotta go home now!” Evan checked his phone. “My mom just got back, what a coincidence! What a shame, the cheesecake incident will have to wait for another time!” 

“Lunch tomorrow,” Connor narrowed his eyes. “We’ll hear about it at lunch tomorrow.” 

“Where I  _ will  _ be in attendance,” Zoe chirped. “I’ll just join you guys on Wednesdays for lunch though, because otherwise I’ll lose my spot at my usual table, and I  _ do  _ like my friends.” 

“To lunch!” Alana held up her ice cream as if for a toast. 

“To lunch!” The others repeated the gesture. 

Evan felt a pit growing in his stomach. 

He feared that with these lies, there wouldn't be a happy ending. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is midnight ice cream an actual tradition with my friend group? and color coordination??  
> ...perhaps??


	10. for ever and ever

Evan woke up tired. It was the kind of tired where he didn’t want to do anything but roll over and sleep for the next century, the kind of tired where he’d gotten enough sleep but still had been missing  _ something.  _

That’s what this feeling was – he wasn’t tired, there was just something inside him missing. A gaping hole that desperately needed to be filled, but couldn’t be, so he’d sleep and sleep until he could go on not remembering the gaping hole in his chest that sometimes made the world fall out from under him and would whisper dark little thoughts when it knew he would listen. 

Evan knew he’d have to get up for school. He was hungry, though that didn’t really matter much when he could roll over and sleep and ignore it. And frankly, school didn’t matter  _ that  _ much anyway, if he just rolled over and went to sleep – he’d deal with it when he woke up, and maybe he never would –

He squeezed his eyes shut, curling into himself as his alarm yelled into the void. 

“Evan, honey, you need to get up!” His mother peaked her head behind the door, and Evan rolled over to give her a small, crumpled copy of a smile. 

“I’m...I’m on my way up!” Evan sstreached, his limbs feeling heavier than ever. 

Maybe...maybe a shower would help. 

***

A shower didn’t help. 

Neither did picking at a piece of toast for breakfast. 

And then Evan was off to school, where every noise sounded too loud and every person seemed to come just a bit too close. 

But he painted a normal expression on his face, perhaps clinging to his backpack more tightly than he would’ve usually. 

He noticed that the crowd gave him a little more room to breathe when someone came up beside him – Connor, of course, being the only boy in school who had the sheer fear factor working  _ that _ heavily in his favor. 

“You okay, Hansen?”

“Yeah...yeah! I’m fine!” Evan waved Connor off. 

“That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve heard all day but okay,” Connor rolled his eyes. “They tend to give me a bit more space in the halls, so just stick with me if you feel too overwhelmed.” 

“I...why –”

“Hansen. We’re friends now, remember? Bonded over midnight ice cream and everything. If you need a little help in the halls because you’re overwhelmed, it’s not a big deal if I – or any of the others – want to help you. Except for Jared, it’s probably a defining moment in his growth as a person when he decides to go out of his way to be nice to you publicly.” 

“You  _ really _ don’t like me, do you?” Jared had joined on the other side of Evan, snorting at the look of genuine surprise Connor shot him. “Yes, I do walk with Evan in the halls  _ some days.  _ Days like this. I may be an ass, but I’m not a dick.” 

Something warm glowed in Evan’s chest. It didn’t fill the empty spot, but it shrunk it a little bit. 

It had never done that before. 

They walked to first period, and even though Evan didn’t join much in conversation, it was nice to have two friends joking with each other and choosing to be  _ around him _ . 

Today, he took the seat right next to Connor in English. 

***

“Al! Wait up!” Zoe called, rushing down the hall after catching sight of her friend. 

“Zoe?” Alana blinked in surprise. 

“I meant to ask last night, but I’ll ask now – do you want a ride to school every day? Connor is supposed to ask Evan and Jared, we have a car that’s big enough and it would be fun if we could go for like, coffee in the morning or whatever? It’s totally fine if you say no though! No pressure!” 

“That sounds fun!” Alana’s face cracked into a smile. “It would also increase productivity if we started the day on a nice note –”

“No productivity here!” Zoe snorted. “We just wanna be around our friends – somehow, Connor and I ended up in the same group. How weird is that?” She fell into step with Alana, walking her to first period, even if they didn’t share a class. 

“It is rather unexpected,” Alana conceded. “Although I do think that you and Connor are less different than you’d like to think.” 

“Oh, I know.” Zoe scoffed. “We got home from school yesterday and bonded over hair and nails, and then it hit me that holy shit! My brother and I are super similar! And I’ve been an ass to him all this time – although he was an ass to me  _ first,  _ so it’s justified – and we sort of worked on setting aside our differences? It was  _ weird.  _ And then we sat and watched a Wicked bootleg together, like, what? My  _ brother  _ knows how to find bootlegs? It was crazy.” 

“And then Jared just pulls up and it’s like, okay? We’re doing this now?” Zoe shook her head, a smile on her face. 

“It’s strange, I did not expect for us to all grow into this ‘friendship’ thing so quickly.” Alana gave a small smile. “I can’t say I’m unhappy with the result.”

“Same,” Zoe grinned. “See you at lunch!” 

And Alana smiled because  _ yeah _ . 

Yeah, she would. 

***

I know who you are,

and you are. 

You do not know who I am,

and I am not.

I can accept being half loved –

I am half loved, and deserve no better.

You do not know that you are loved –

and you  _ are  _ loved, wholly and truly –

for I do not love in halves, and even now I love you.

So I will go on loving you,

and you will not know who I am. 

And it’s fine, and you’re fine, and I’ll be fine –

loving you from a distance,

for ever and ever. 


	11. irony

Jared wasn’t stupid. 

Of course he wasn’t stupid – in the one class he cared about he maintained a nearly perfect score for the year. He could read a room and everyone into it like a book – growing up around an anxious kid you gotta watch out for would do that. 

Jared was a lot of things. Dumb was not one of those things. 

The truth was, he knew things. Jared  _ noticed  _ things. Things nobody else paid attention to. 

Things like a tall asshole who liked coffee and a boy with an obsession with trees and a broken arm. Things like said tall asshole having bad spelling. Things like said tall asshole always having his phone in his hand or nearby when said tree boy was talking to someone online. 

Things like tree boy writing poetry about coffee and regret, weaving together flowery words about bitter tears and sweet irony. Things like tree boy suddenly being more attached to his phone and that dumb little smile he got whenever he started messaging back and forth with the mysterious ‘esspresso_depresso’ who he had met online over the summer. 

The truth was, Jared knew that Connor Murphy was esspresso_depresso, and he already knew that theloreax was Evan – he’d been the one to convince him to get an account, after all. He also realized when he got to school that morning that Evan had pieced it together. He was more comfortable and yet somehow more nervous than he’d been with Connor before. 

Jared wasn’t going to say anything. Not directly. 

And he’d try to ignore the bitter feeling eating away at his stomach. It would...it would be  _ fine.  _

***

“So there I was, Wicked bootleg on at three in the morning, desperately wondering what had led me to this point, right?” Jared was walking with Zoe and Alana, shoulders back with a practiced confidence that could’ve never been real. “And I’m really getting invested, because, y’know,  _ Wicked.  _ And then we get to my favorite song, Dancing Through Life, and I’m like ‘damn, this is a bop, I  _ have  _ to sing along’! Because, y’know, Fiyero is an absolute legend and the kind of person I aspire to be.” 

“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Alana deadpanned as Zoe giggled a little. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jared glanced sideways at Alana. 

“‘Learn to live the unexamined life’?” Alana quirked an eyebrow. “That’s...pretty much your whole thing.” 

“She’s not wrong?” Zoe shrugged. “You don’t seem to care much about...well... _ anything.” _

“Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention,” Jared felt a knot growing in his stomach. “I have things I care about. They’re just not the same things you care about.”

“Like video games?” They were at a mostly empty table in the cafeteria now as Alana asked, clearly having not noticed the change in Jared’s demeanor – though to be fair, neither had Zoe. 

“I care about things outside video games! I may not have school or – or  _ jazz band  _ – but I have things that matter to me!” 

“Such as?” Zoe asked, leaning forward with interest. 

“I like musicals! Musical theatre is fun!” 

“You’re not in the theatre program at school, doesn’t count.” Alana grabbed her sandwich from her lunchbox. 

“Yes it does!” Jared argued. “And even if that doesn’t count, I like technology. I built my own gaming PC, did you know that?” 

“That’s actually fairly cool!” Zoe latched onto this. 

“Of course it is, I’m  _ insanely  _ cool.” 

“Okay, but like, you haven’t tried any extracurriculars, have you?” Alana tilted her head. “You should try, like, the FTC team or something!” 

“No thanks,” Jared snorted. “I’ve got enough on my plate.” 

“Such as?” Alana just wouldn’t let go of this one thing. __ And Jared was  _ not having a good day.  _

“Y’know...stuff!” 

“Yes, your thriving social life is definitely keeping you busy. And so are your insanely difficult classes,” Alana deadpanned. “Honestly, Jared, put yourself out there a bit more!” 

“I’m  _ sorry, _ I’m too busy joining stupid little pathetic lunchtime poetry clubs and trying to keep my suicidal  _ family friend  _ from losing it to put myself out there –!” 

There was a small gasp behind Jared – and beside him, for that matter, from Zoe – but he didn’t care about that, because Evan. 

Evan had  _ heard _ that. 

And Jared’s eyes were wide, he hadn’t meant it, not really, but he was scared because he’d said it anyway, his insecurities lashing out  _ again  _ and hurting the people around him, as always, and he didn’t know what to do. 

So he bolted. 

He ignored the sound of Evan starting to cry, of Zoe and Alana saying  _ something – _

And he was dragged back to reality by a hand on his arm, pulling him to face Connor, staring the tall boy right in the eyes. There was something deeply angry there, like Jared had said something about  _ Connor,  _ or like there had been a grave personal offense that could never be recovered from. 

And then Jared was seeing stars, trying to recover from the hit to his gut. 

This had turned out to be a  _ really  _ bad day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone: wow jared is so nice!!! it’s so different from what i’m used to!!!  
> me, knowing this is coming:  
> me: hahaha yeah!! he’s!!! so good!!! like i’d write him to have /flaws/ and make //mistakes// pfft neverrrrr  
> seriously though this guy is about to get dragged through a character arc kicking and screaming the whole damn way. because. y’know. that’ll help me build the foundations for everyone else’s arcs. because. y'know. that's coming too.


	12. Family-Friend

Jared could trace this particular problem to second grade. 

It was the first year that he and Evan had managed to get into the same class, and both boys were really,  _ really  _ excited – Evan because he’d have a friend in class, Jared because he’d have his  _ favorite  _ friend in class. 

Jared had never really understood why Evan didn’t have more friends. Evan was really cool! He liked trucks (until his  _ stupid _ dad left) and had a knack for video games and stealth that left even  _ Jared _ baffled. He was really good at hide-and-seek, and really smart! 

Evan was Jared’s favorite person, and Jared didn’t understand why Evan didn’t have more people that liked him. After all, Jared had a lot of friends, even if he was just the  _ extra _ ordinary Jared Kleinman. And Evan wasn’t ordinary. He was really fun to be around. 

But it was the first day of second grade, and Jared was watching Evan try to introduce himself to the class as the teacher instructed, and it made something ugly rear up in his stomach. Because Evan was struggling to talk about his interests and his summer, the words getting caught in his throat and coming out muffled and broken. 

Jared hated it. Hated seeing Evan like that. So he did something – did the only thing he could think to do. Already begging forgiveness internally from the person in front of him, Jared kicked with all his might. 

That day had been the first incident with Connor Murphy that Jared ever had. It was the first time his mother had ever been called into the school because Jared had gotten into trouble. 

Jared never explained his actions, not to anyone, even if he was quietly proud. 

And that night as Jared went to sleep,  _ maybe  _ a dark little thought wandered into his head. 

_ Maybe Evan doesn’t even like you.  _

_ Maybe he just sticks around because he’s too scared to talk to anyone else.  _

That was the start of Jared’s fear of Evan Hansen. 

***

“Hey, Jared?” Evan’s voice was the smallest Jared had ever heard it as they played Minecraft – it was fourth grade, and they’d been building in this little world every day for a month now. They only ever played in creative mode, because survival mode made Evan too nervous, even if it was what Jared preferred. 

“Yeah, Ev?” Jared didn’t look over as he kept working on his little project – what he imagined Hyrule Castle from Ocarina of Time to look like if it was in Minecraft. Complete with the irritating garden section. 

“People – nobody important – but they were saying...saying you only stuck around because you’re a family friend. That you – uh – don’t really like me. So I was wondering – uh – you don’t have to stay. If you don’t want to.” 

“That’s dumb.” Jared continued to look at the screen as he spoke. “I’m your friend because I wanna be. And besides, a family friend is like, better than a friend, right? Because we’re more than friends, we’re  _ family  _ friends. That means that we’re like, family, but better because we picked each other, right?” 

“Right! I’m – uh – sorry for bothering you asking, I –” Evan fidgeted with the controller as Jared caught his wrist, finally looking away from the screen and gazing into Evan's eyes. Evan was hit with a strange sensation – as if Jared were looking through him, seeing more than Evan had realized he’d let show. 

“If you ever get worried about anything like that, just talk to me. Brains can say stupid things, especially if they’re being fed dumb information by other kids. I’ll set the record straight every time!” 

***

Jared had decided that he’d earn his spot as Evan’s very favorite person, to be the kind of friend Evan deserved to have. It was sixth grade, and Jared had figured out by now how to stay in the same classes as Evan – he just had to make the same grades, and they’d get into the same level! That was easy enough. 

Evan was super smart, but he panicked so much whenever he got a group assignment or presentation that he’d always remained only a  _ little  _ above average. Which Jared could do. 

So they stayed in the same classes even  _ if  _ Jared’s parents felt weird about the grades their son was getting, because he was only doing pretty well despite how far ahead he could work in math and science for his age. Jared always sat next to Evan, covering for him in social situations when he had to and glaring at the people who said mean things. 

But Jared could not fight every battle for Evan, and worst of all Jared couldn’t fight the battle that lived in Evan’s head. 

Which Jared had noticed by now, by the way. Jared noticed  _ everything.  _ He noticed the way the other students started to form little groups based on their interests, noticed the way that the boys in class had started looking at certain girls (ew), noticed how he wasn’t feeling any of those feelings himself. 

Not toward anyone. Which wasn’t all  _ that  _ weird, he may’ve just been too young to start thinking about it. But people usually started feeling these things around the start of middle school, and he didn’t feel them towards girls  _ or  _ guys. Which was another thing that Jared had noticed existed. 

But Jared shrugged and moved on. It was probably just him being young. 

So he shut those thoughts in a box and vowed not to worry about it until high school. If he was still not feeling that weird romantic-y feeling by high school,  _ then  _ he’d worry. 

***

Jared wasn’t enough. 

That much he could tell – Evan was fading, trying really hard to do that  _ thing  _ he does where he fades into the background and pretends he doesn’t exist. 

Except he’d never done that with _ Jared _ before. Jared and Evan had always just...talked through things. Figured it out. Because they were closer than friends – they were  _ family friends,  _ closer than friends and better than family because they picked each other. 

But  _ damn, _ it sure didn’t feel like it lately. Freshman year had started, and Evan disappeared at every lunch period, leaving Jared to the mercy of the other kids. Which was  _ fine,  _ Jared had enough friends to get by on his own, but it still  _ stung.  _

And besides, those feelings? The romantic-y ones? They’d never showed up. Jared could now say with absolute certainty that he wasn’t attracted to  _ anyone _ in _ any _ capacity. And that was...weird. Because everyone either liked guys, or they liked girls, or they liked both. He’d never heard of anyone not liking anyone. 

So that was...bad. It felt wrong. Everything about all of this felt  _ wrong.  _ He was too dependent on Evan, who apparently could function just fine without him. He didn’t like guys or girls, which was weird and freakish and would make all his new friends hate him. He was bored in his classes because he’d taken the ones he knew Evan would take, and while Evan was no slouch academically, he had very different interests than Jared. 

So Jared made a choice. 

Jared decided to stop caring. To stop  _ trying.  _ Because fuck, that’s what Evan did, wasn’t it? 

_ Jared _ hadn’t started this. 

_ Jared _ hadn’t made things weird. 

So he did what he thought he should – he told two little lies. 

“Oh,  _ yeah,  _ I totally have this girlfriend from camp – she’s super cool, you guys would  _ love  _ her, here’s her picture –” it was a picture of his gaming buddy from camp. She  _ was _ cool, but they weren’t dating, and Jared would never like her that way. 

“Evan and I? We’re not  _ friends.  _ We’re  _ family friends.  _ We like, only really ever stuck together because it’s what our parents wanted.” 

Jared knew Evan had heard. 

Jared never brought it up. 

Neither did Evan. 

Things stayed weird. 

***

It was sophomore year, and Jared had gotten his license before pretty much anyone. He wanted to be able to drive, wanted to be able to get  _ out  _ and be alone far, far away from this stupid town with its ideas on what people should and should not be and who people should and should not like. 

Most of all, Jared wanted to be with Evan, his best friend – the only friend he’d ever really been honest with since middle school, even if he’d told a few little lies. So Jared pulled up outside in the middle of the night, and decided to tell one more. 

**kazooie:** get up, nerd. i’ve got two thermoses of hot chocolate and a janky-ass telescope in my car, we’re going stargazing

**banjo:** And you want me along because???

**kazooie:** if you come that means my car insurance gets paid off for the next two months, let’s goooooo

Jared had paid off his car insurance about two weeks ago. Evan didn’t know that.

**banjo:** You can just say I came??

**kazooie:** i need photographic evidence!! hurryyyyy the hot chocolate is getting colddddd

They went out that night and it was...a lot like the way it used to be. Evan was smaller, at least on a surface level – he was less excited to talk about things unless asked. Jared was less honest, hiding more and more behind his false confidence and boxing himself in more and more behind a wall of lies. 

But it was the most like the way it used to be that it had been in a long time. So it was fine, really, it was. 

And it started a tradition of Jared showing up in the middle of the night unannounced to go on adventures with Evan. 

Usually this was when Jared was feeling particularly lonely or insecure – when the crushing weight of lying to everyone he knew was smothering his chest and filling up the space between his dreams. Or it was when Jared noticed Evan slipping more and more, fading into the background and hiding behind a wall of glass that only he could see. When he needed Jared, Jared would come. 

Always. 

***

So yes, Jared’s problem with Evan Hansen began all the way back in second grade, when his insecurities pushed him to become too dependent on a boy that could barely hold himself together. 

And with a lie passing his lips and regret lacing every word, Jared had poisoned the term ‘family friend’ in a way he’d never meant to. 

Well, no, that was a lie too. Because Jared had  _ meant  _ to do it, to hurt Evan, because Evan was hurting him. Jared would later realize that Evan hadn’t meant to hurt him, that Evan was already hurting, but Jared was just a kid. He didn’t know. 

Evan had broken his arm over the summer when he almost died, and Jared hadn’t even gotten so much as a phone call. Not even a  _ text.  _

So Jared did what he always did. He tried harder, realizing eventually that nothing he could do would be enough to fix Evan and make Evan feel better, and he’d snap back, hurting them both in the process. 

And he repressed the hell out of his feelings, or at least lied about them to everyone. Because if he didn’t, he really  _ would  _ end up alone. 

So.

Fuck the second grade, fuck Evan Hansen, and fuck the term  _ family friend _ . 

For the second time since second-grade, his mother was called in to the school about an incident revolving around Evan Hansen – not that she knew that. Not that she’d  _ ever _ know that. 

And this time, Jared had enough. 

Jared was  _ done _ with Evan Hansen. And he knew Evan Hansen was done with him. 

And that was  _ fine.  _

Jared was always better at single player games anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh  
> rip jared???


	13. Confessio

Jared was holding an ice pack to the side of his head, and Connor was mostly unscathed. They were sitting quietly outside the principal’s office, quietly anticipating the verdict. 

“So...what did you mean when you said...?” Connor’s voice was quiet, almost soft. 

“I don’t know all the gory details,” Jared’s expression was a mix of sadness and anger, something that had been brewing for a long time. “I didn’t even get a  _ phone call  _ when it happened. I just know that Evan Hansen doesn’t fall out of trees –” he cut himself short, his voice barely a whisper. “Evan Hansen lets go. So...keep an eye out for him, alright?”

“You really are his friend. Even after how you treated him?” 

Jared snorted. “Always. That’s what we promised when we were kids – best friends forever, however stupid. I may not be his best friend – that I’m not capable of. But forever...forever I can do.” 

“You’re not like, pining or some shit, are you?” 

“Ew,” Jared wrinkled his nose. “Don’t like Hansen that way. Or...anyone, for that matter. God, that feels good to say out loud. But you tell anyone and your reputation dies, Murphy. Actually, that’s not a threat to you. You tell anyone and  _ Alana’s  _ reputation dies.” 

“Alright. Not my secret to share anyway.”

“...thanks.” 

***

Evan’s skin felt like someone had put a live wire under it. It buzzed and burned as ice ran through his veins, and breathing felt like it was impossible. 

He felt like his head was stuffed with cotton as he was dragged to the poetry room, sat down on the couch next to a Zoe who was buzzing with a different kind of energy. She seemed almost as angry as Evan was anxious. 

And then there was Alana, who was fiddling with an electric kettle and hissing something about chamomile tea. 

Nobody was handling  _ any  _ of this well. 

So Evan did what Evan does best – he took a breath, and let his own emotions and worries take a back seat. 

“Are...are you guys okay?” He was quiet, his voice still shaking – he  _ was  _ just the one who had his lifelong friend say something awful to him, even if it had been building for a while and he kinda deserved it. 

“Fuck, Evan, I should be asking  _ you  _ that,” Zoe buried her face in her hands, letting out an angry sigh. “I just – this is all so screwed up. Jared goes and says  _ that  _ – which we  _ will be talking about later but this is not the time  _ – and then Connor goes and beats the shit out of him. I was crazy for thinking he’d ever changed!” 

“Here,” Alana shoved mugs into their hands. They were hot – tea, as a matter of fact, judging by Alana’s muttering earlier. “Now we’re going to  _ sit  _ and we’re going to  _ talk through our problems  _ like  _ civilized human beings.”  _

“So unlike Jared and Connor who just  _ happened  _ to –”

“We aren’t here to talk about Jared and Connor!” Alana roared. “We are here to talk  _ to  _ Evan, who needs our help!” 

“No, I’m fine, really!”

“Yeah, and I’ve secretly been a succulent this whole time,” Alana rolled her eyes. “Ev,” Evan flinched at the nickname, and Alana noticed. She took a moment to collect herself, continuing on, “You’re not fine. And that’s okay right now. But you need to be honest.” 

Evan’s skin was on fire. 

“What...what do you want me to say?” Evan’s voice was quiet, but it was building. “Do you want me to say that – that he’s right? Because he is! Do you want me to get angry that he just told the whole damn world that I’m – a secret that he had no right to know himself? Because I am! Do you want me to explain why I did what I did? Because – because I couldn’t tell you if I tried!” 

Evan slumped over, his eyes blurring. He huddled over his tea, somehow both freezing and bursting into flame. 

“I thought he and I had moved past things like this,” he murmured. “Jared and I...things have always been complicated. He started acting differently in about sixth grade. Less honest with everyone. And I noticed – of course I did. He and I were...well, I thought we were best friends. But he’d never lied to  _ me  _ before. I thought eventually he’d tell the truth. But he didn’t, he just kept building up lie after lie.” 

“And...and then it was our freshman year, and I was...in a bad place. Mentally. Things  _ happened  _ over the summer but he was at camp, and I wanted him to have fun and not get dragged into –”

–  _ Dr. Sherman, everything starting to get worse, my mom leaving me home alone all the time – _

“– everything. And then he came back, and I know I was distant, but he ended up saying some really awful things. And he never apologized, but I  _ thought  _ maybe after this summer he was – I dunno. Back to normal? Even...even if he was hiding behind his lies, claiming everything was for ‘car insurance’...I thought he was still...my friend, or something. But I was  _ stupid.”  _ Evan hid his tears in the back of his hand, giving a shaking sigh. 

“Evan...did  _ you  _ ever apologise?” Alana asked gently. 

“Did _ I _ –?”

“Jared screwed up, and today is his fault,” Alana was quick to explain. “But the rift in your friendship...that’s not  _ just  _ his fault. You pulled away, even if he was lying about something. And you never actually told him why, did you?” 

“I – well no, but –”

_ “Talk to him.” _ Alana was gentle but firm. “It doesn’t need to be today, or tomorrow, or even this week if you need to calm down. But once you’re cool, and you know you can have a conversation without exploding...you both need to sit down and talk to each other. You both have things to apologise for.” 

“But – what if he doesn’t accept it? What if he hates me?” Evan’s voice was small. 

“Then you realize what happened, you process it, you learn from it, and you do better next time. You’ll have  _ tried,  _ and according to the Zoe Murphy Book of Shit That Matters, that’s all that really counts. Besides, now you’ve got at least three friends who’ll be there after, right?” Zoe gave Evan a light punch to the shoulder. “Well, probably two. We may need to give Connor a stern talking to before he can be in the same room as Jared or even  _ hear  _ about Jared kicking his ass.” 

“But until then,” Alana continued. “Let’s just spend the rest of the day in here, alright? I have the stuff to make hot chocolate, tea, and Evan still has cookies and such stuffed in his locker – which Zoe or I will be happy to grab. I also know how to get around the school WiFi block so as to watch things like Netflix. Being a teacher’s pet has its upsides,” Alana shrugged, pulling out her laptop and legitimately having Netflix open already. 

“How did you –” Zoe was in awe. 

“Mrs. Smith was concerned that I’ve been focusing too much on my studies and that my boredom in class will lead to me presenting a poor example for the rest of the class. So long as I remain quiet and appear to be paying attention (and my screen isn’t visible, of course) I was permitted to download Netflix to watch  _ The Good Place  _ in her class because she feels it is still relevant to a philosophy course and will prevent me from getting bored.” 

“Holy shit,” Evan breathed. “Isn’t Mrs. Smith, like, a real stickler for the rules?”

“I just gave her a little nudge in the right direction,” Alana shrugged. 

_ “Holy shit.” _

***

The day came, the day went. 

Jared was...still upset. He’d been let off easy – detention, two weeks. Connor had been given the same sentence, plus the rest of the week in suspension. 

He knew why he was upset. He hated it. He hated how much he needed his friend, hated this weird pit in his stomach, he hated it he hated it he  _ hated it – _

– still, Jared needed to fix this. Not with his parents, who didn’t much care and weren’t around often. Not with the school, who already had blamed Connor – which Jared wasn’t thrilled with,  _ by the way,  _ because he and Connor had bonded in that little dumb conversation while waiting for their sentencing. 

No, Jared needed to fix this with  _ Evan.  _ And that...was going to be the damn hardest thing he’d ever done. 

So it was the middle of the night, and Jared was doing what he always did – sneaking out. 

**kazooie:** i’m outside with two thermoses of hot chocolate and a janky-ass telescope in my car, we’re going stargazing

**banjo:** Go away, Jared. 

**banjo:** I can’t deal with your bullshit tonight. 

**kazooie:** i don’t deserve better than that

**kazooie:** but...can i at least apologize? to your face?

**banjo:** ...fine.

**banjo:** That hot chocolate better still be hot

A few minutes later, Jared’s car door swung open. And there he was, a tired, cranky Evan Hansen. 

“I’m...a shitty person. An even shittier friend, honestly?” Jared scratched the back of his neck, a sad laugh at his lips. “If sorry were going to cut it, I’d have said it sooner. But I really screwed everything up with this one. Before this one, even. You deserve a better friend.” 

“So you’re apologizing for today? And only today? Not everything that happened before?” 

“I...was sort of hoping a blanket apology would work? Because I don’t think I could sit and list all the ways that I deserve to be hated, all the ways I failed you. Because I did, and I just – fuck, Evan, I needed you. I needed you freshman year, and you weren’t  _ there.  _ And I got – hurt, I guess? Angry? And I lashed out. But that wasn’t okay, because our friendship was never one where I was supposed to rely on you to help with my insecurities, that wasn’t how it  _ worked.”  _

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Evan was speechless. “Of course I’d be there if you needed me. You just need to talk to me.” 

“But how was I ever supposed to?” Jared muttered. “You were always anxious. You always had so much going on that I just –never got to talk to you about my problems. Which was fine! It just...I don’t like girls.” Jared said this suddenly, and it caught Evan off guard. “Or guys, for that matter. I just...don’t get it? Like if you like romance go off I guess but it just...doesn’t sound like fun. And I was figuring it out right around freshman year, but I’d never heard of anyone like that before, and I was...it was scary. And it hurt, but how was I supposed to say that to you when you were so far away?”

“You figured it out before your freshman year,” Evan murmured. “Sixth grade, right? That was when I noticed you started lying more.” 

“...Yeah,” Jared sighed. “And things got all screwed up. But freshman year...it got hard. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. So I had to lie to everyone else instead. And in the process, I screwed things up. I was supposed to be there for you, always, right? We were friends. We were  _ family  _ friends.” 

“But now we’re just  _ family friends.” _ Evan sighed. “I can’t forgive you, y’know. Not for everything. Not right now.” 

“I didn’t expect you to,” Jared shrugged. “But an apology like this is as much about the future as it is the past.” 

“I’m sorry too,” Evan was quiet. “Our friendship...it wasn’t fair to you. Not the way it was back then. You were always supporting me, but I was never supporting you. And then you ended up using that to your advantage, but I deserved it.” 

“No you didn’t,” Jared scoffed. “You deserve a lot of things, but a friend as shitty as me? Nah. You deserve better.” 

“You’re just as insecure as I am, aren’t you?” 

“I just tend to hide it a little better,” Jared shrugged. “Can we try this again? Being friends, I mean. I don’t want...I don’t want us to get bitter. I don’t want to hate you, and I don’t want you to hate me.” 

“Honestly? I couldn’t hate you if I tried.”

“...Me too.” 

“Wanna go look at some dumb stars and forget our problems for a little while, Mr. ‘Car Insurance’?”

“I was trying to find a valid excuse, don’t judge me!” 

Evan flicked Jared’s ear, a small smile on his lips. “You’ve always been a shitty liar.” 

“Not as bad as you. And we need to have a talk about a couple of things,  _ loreax. _ Especially about you and  _ esspresso.” _

“You know about that?” Evan turned ghostly white. 

“It’s my business to know everyone else’s business,” Jared started driving, a smile at his lips. “But seriously, if he hurts you I  _ will  _ mow him down with my car.” 

“I expect no less,” Evan snorted.

“And...we have to talk about what happened over the summer. Not today, or even this year, if you don’t want to. But eventually...”

“Not yet,” Evan murmured. 

“Just...next time, call me, alright? When you need me, I’ll be there. Always. Even if we’ve had a dumb fight, or if you just did something awful, or if  _ I  _ did something awful –”

“I will. I promise.” 

“I’m...not going to be better overnight. I’m still going to do and say dumb things sometimes. I’m going to lash out sometimes. I’m going to try, though. I really am.” 

“Me too.”

For a night, they sat under the stars and drank hot chocolate, making up their own constellations and cracking jokes only they could understand. 

And maybe for the first time in years, things stopped being weird. 

***

_ “Hey, Ev, we’re always gonna be friends, right?” Jared spoke, his voice small as he turned the page in The Silmarillion, his favorite book in sixth grade. “Like, always? No matter what? Even if there are things about me that’re weird, or dumb?”  _

_ “Always!” Evan smiled, looking up from his book on tree facts. “Because we’re family friends, right?” _

_ “Right!” _

_ “Did I do something to make you worry, though? Like, you’re okay, right?” _

_ “I’m fine, Ev.” Jared laughed a little. “My brain was being dumb for a moment. Don’t worry about it.”  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thus begins jared's arc!! it's sorta just gonna take a backseat for the most part for now?? because these things are gradual, even if this started off as a major shift in his character in the right direction.


	14. Fallout

I needed you,

and you needed me,

and we were happy. 

I needed you,

but you needed me,

and you were happy. 

I needed you,

but you couldn’t see, 

and I needed you to be happy. 

With a lie passing my lips, 

a silent prayer lost to the wind,

neither of us were happy. 

I need you,

but you don’t need me,

so I’ll pick up the pieces. 

***

Jared glared at his poem, determined to burn it or rip it to pieces or – or  _ anything.  _ Because no matter how true the words felt, he couldn’t show that to the rest of the – Subterranean Sonnetists, or whatever the hell they were supposed to be called. 

He wanted to go to the meeting they had at lunch. He really wanted to be there, to be a part of  _ something.  _ He was just...scared. Evan said that he should come, that everything would be fine, that he wasn’t really mad anymore, not  _ really,  _ and that the whole group needed to have a talk. 

But.

_ But.  _

That didn’t stop the familiar pit from opening in Jared’s stomach, the lingering anxiety that ate right through the toaster waffles he’d had that morning and the three cups of coffee that were meant to keep him awake. 

Insomnia was a right bastard most of the time, but Jared thanked his lucky stars for it whenever he went out on a midnight run with Ev – or the others now, apparently, since that was going to be a thing going forward. It meant he had experience with going multiple days without sleep, meant he was used to that lingering feeling of sickness that permeates the body and forces the five-minute-between-class naps that he was prone to taking. 

But this was deeper than that tired-sickness. 

Jared ignored the looks Alana was shooting him through class, keeping his head down and scribbling more, and more, and more. 

He had to get this poem right. 

***

The thing that stirred in Evan’s stomach that was a fusion of hunger and anxiety could shoot itself  _ right  _ into the void, and Evan would laugh as he watched it pull a Team Rocket, blasting into the sun. 

Because Evan was alone in his English class, Connor still being in suspension. 

Well. Not  _ alone.  _ Because Evan knew something that Connor didn’t, because Evan had a secret, because Evan knew who esspresso was. 

Because somehow, weirdly, Evan wasn’t alone anymore. 

**theloreax:** School is awful??? I wish I could go home or better yet, go out and enjoy the trees

**esspresso_depresso:** you dare to insult a place of learning? dare to insult the education our government so generously provides?

**theloreax:** I contemplated getting hit by a car this morning to avoid taking a test third period.

**esspresso_depresso:** 1 - mood

**esspresso_depresso:** 2 - if you get hit by a car i’ll necromancy ur ass and kill you all over again

**theloreax:** Joke’s on you, you have to know my true name in order to resurrect me and call my soul back to my body

**esspresso_depresso:** why,,,the fuck do you know that?

**theloreax:** I had a *brutal* D&D phase in middle school. Car insurance man and I? We’d bully his cousin into playing with us. I was always a druid when I got to play, but usually I ended up DMing. Literally every campaign. 

**theloreax:** Car insurance man was typically an artificer. We had a big bad called the ‘necrodancer’ once, and I had to research to make the experience as immersive as possible. 

**theloreax:** It was about seventh grade, I ended up with some sick dance moves and more knowledge than any one person should have about necromancy.

**esspresso_depresso:** jesus fucking christ loreax

**theloreax:** Necromancy was originally communicating with the dead to predict the future, did you know that? It started way back with the _Odyssey_ and the word is stolen from Latin, which in turn stole it from Greek ^.^

**esspresso_depresso:** why did you

**esspresso_depresso:** why did you know that?

**theloreax:** ^.^

**esspresso_depresso:** tHAT WASN’T AN ANSWER - 

**theloreax:** Live in fear, you foolish mortal, and die knowing that your name will be part of the fire that will burn society to the ground.

**esspresso_depresso:** what the h-e-double FUCK - 

**theloreax:** uwu

**esspresso_depresso:** You can’t ‘uwu’ your way out of this one –

**theloreax:** Too bad, I think I just did.

**theloreax:** *Dramatic cape swirl as I stride out of the room*

**esspresso_depresso:** damn u!! i cannot compete with the power of the cape!!!

Evan smiled into his phone, the kind of soft smile that ignites one’s cheeks with candlelight and reminds one of sunshine as they climb up and up, the soft feeling and glow of a sunset. 

Thus passed the class period, with dumb jokes typed into a phone and hiding in the back of the class room. So...basically the same as every class period, just with less hiding. He knew he still had that dumb, candlelight smile on his face as he walked out of the room, even if it was hidden behind the blazing pink cheeks of anxiety and the high shoulders that accompanied any walk through the hall. 

“Oooh, somebody’s got a crush~!” Zoe teased as Evan walked along side her on their way to AP Bio. 

“I don’t –” Evan started stumbling through his words. “I mean, it’s not a crush? I just have this friend online, and I just really like talking to them because they’re really nice and they just  _ get it  _ in a way that nobody I know in real life does, and –”

“That’s dangerous!” Jared’s voice snarked beside Evan. “You don’t know who they are on the other side of the screen. They could be a creepy emo JD rip-off, or a mass murderer, or worse –  _ a jock’s secret nerd phase. _ You don’t wanna be part of a jock’s secret nerd phase!” 

“He’s right,” Zoe sympathized. “I know the jocks at this school, you would  _ not  _ want to touch that with a ten foot pole.” 

“They  _ are _ fairly awful,” Alana agreed. “Wanna have our meeting early? We have some things to talk through.” 

“And skip class?” Evan fidgeted nervously. 

“I have full permission to have us skip class for – what was it again – a group project that I have assembled on behalf of the community. It’s studying the impact that written word can have on a group of people, studying the psychological effects and the bonds that form due to the process of writing out one’s innermost thoughts and sharing them with a group.” Alana smiled, hugging her textbook tighter to her chest. “We basically have a get-out-of-jail-free card whenever we need so long as our grades remain good – and I’m there, of course. To record the results, obviously.” 

“And the school agreed to that?” Zoe was incredulous. 

“That was my doing,” Jared raised his hand slightly, a cocky grin on his face. “As it turns out, there are multiple people with very  _ interesting  _ secrets on the school board. And we all know it’s my job to know everything about everyone.” 

“You  _ are _ the school gossip,” Evan shrugged noncholantly, and then blinked with surprise when Zoe and Alana shot him weird looks. “What? It’s true! He knows  _ everything,  _ like, almost to a creepy degree?”

“Oh, and we made up last night. I screwed up, he screwed up, we apologized under a starry sky, it was very dramatic,” Jared rolled his eyes. 

“It was nice! You were nice! For once – well, not that you’re not nice like, all the time, but you’re kind of an asshole? Like you always call yourself the ‘Insanely Cool Jared Kleinman’ but really you could call yourself the ‘Insanely Asshole-ish Jared Kleinman’ and it would be perfectly adequate? Not that you should, because you’re not an asshole all the time. But you also kind of are?” 

“You’re...really digging yourself into quite a hole there, Ev.” Jared laughed a little. “But yes, I’m an asshole. You know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. I’m the Insanely Cool, Insanely Asshole-ish Jared Kleinman. They’re not mutually exclusive things.” 

“To the meeting?” Alana asked, quirking an eyebrow. 

“To the meeting,” Zoe agreed. 

***

“So...you both screwed up. And you talked through things last night?” Alana asked, sitting Jared and Evan at opposite ends of the couch. She dragged two chairs across from them – one of which she sat in, the other one being occupied by Zoe. It looked vaguely like a shoddy TV-show intervention. 

“Yes, we did.” Jared rolled his eyes. “We talked through our issues, what had broken our friendship to this point, what we’d do better. I’m supposed to be open and honest with my feelings more, and Evan is supposed to make an effort to not drift away, and to be conscious of the fact that he’s not the only one who’s insecure.” 

“Great! So now that that’s over with, we have another issue to deal with. That being, of course, that my brother is likely to try to kill Jared when they meet next!” Zoe sounded tired. 

“Nope, I don’t think so, actually? We had a decent conversation outside of the principal’s office yesterday.” 

“That...doesn’t sound like Connor,” Zoe shifted, her voice low. 

“Neither does reassuring me that he’s not going to tell the whole world that I don’t like girls  _ or  _ guys, but he went and did it.” Jared shrugged. 

“So you’re ace?” Alana tilted her head. 

“Wait...there’s a word for it?” Jared blinked. 

“Yes, asexuality is real, and so is aromanticism, which you sound like you  _ also  _ have –”

“There are  _ words _ for it?” Jared shot to his feet, his expression the most elated that Alana had ever seen. “Like, that means that there are other people who don’t like – who don’t like  _ anybody  _ in that weird, romantic-y way? Like, like other people who –”

“Yes?” Alana blinked. “Jared, do you really mean to say that you’ve gone this long without being exposed to the aspec community at  _ all? _ That must’ve been...really hard, actually.” 

“I’m not weird,” Jared breathed. “I gotta do research. I gotta learn all about it!” He reached into his bag and grabbed his laptop. “Y’all can go do what you want.  _ I’m  _ going on an epic internet journey of self discovery.” 

“Great! I’ll start the second half of  _ The Good Place _ season one!” Alana grabbed her own laptop. “You guys are going to  _ love  _ how it ends. And then, once the lunch bell rings, we start our actual meeting. Yeah?” 

“Yeah!” The others cheered. 

“Wait,” Zoe paused. “When did Alana become our unofficial leader?” 

“When she was the only one in the room with enough brain cells to function,” Jared deadpanned. “Now shoo, go watch your little philosophy sitcom. I have research to do.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently writing jared as an actual human person is uncommon?? like yikes i did nothing special he’s just getting treated like a character instead of a plot device is that – is that uncommon???


	15. Change

At some point Evan had migrated next to Jared, who had stretched across the floor. They were both laughing quietly at something that flitted across the screen. It was something about garlic bread...? And cake. And dragons? 

“That explains the D&D phase,” Jared snorted. “It  _ totally  _ explains the D&D phase.” 

“No...no wonder we never had a bard in our party!” Evan giggled. “Can you  _ imagine?” _

“We should have a campaign!” Jared was facing Evan now, no longer paying attention to his laptop. “I could DM, because you probably got sick of that after a while...sorry about that, by the way – and we could bully the others into playing with us! We could have so much fun with it. We could bring back... _ the bagel.” _

Zoe quirked an eyebrow from where she sat next to Alana. “The bagel?” 

“It knows all,” Evan’s tone was deadly serious. 

“It  _ sees _ all,” Jared continued. 

“It listens –”

“– and it waits –”

“–for in the beginning there was bagel–”

“–and in the end, bagel is all that shall remain.”

“What the actual fuck?” Alana blinked, having not seen the boys ever do...whatever the hell  _ that  _ was before. 

“We  _ nailed  _ that one!” Jared cheered as Evan gave him a wide smile. 

“We...we practiced for  _ weeks  _ in eighth grade, it – it was in preparation for a campaign where there was some like, mindflayer or whatever? I’m not sure, I’d homebrewed it to high hell, but it – it had taken control of Jared’s character, so to make it spookier and more immersive, I – I had him practice a couple of lines and speeches and such to make it more eerie when we finished each other’s sentences!” Evan gave a wobbly smile. “Do you remember the reaction we got to that?” 

“It was  _ awesome! _ Especially with Charlie’s reaction, they absolutely  _ lost it–” _

“Dungeons and dragons with the two of you sounds incredibly dangerous,” Alana deadpanned. 

“I can assure you –”

“–it is,” Evan finished Jared’s sentence, and they did that thing again where they glanced at each other and laughed a little bit. 

“Oh my God, you two are  _ those  _ kinds of friends,” Zoe accused. “You can like, basically read each other’s minds or whatever, can’t you?” 

“We’ve  _ basically  _ been best friends since before we were born,” Jared shrugged. “Things were weird enough for a while that we stopped Saturday D&D and stopped talking as much, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t read Evan like a book –”

“– and...and doesn’t mean that I can’t look at Jared, tell you his entire plan, and tell you all the holes in it. By the way, that’s never going to work, especially since there’s no way in  _ hell  _ Alana would play a tiefling warlock. So you can stop that homebrew pact right now.” 

“But it would be so fun! Especially with an amnesia subplot? Like, the  _ opportunities –” _

“No, we are not – we can’t do that again. Last time you were all ‘like, the opportunities –’ you almost killed the entire party in one go. From a  _ balloon tarrasque.  _ You’re – you’re no longer allowed to make important decisions.” 

“But  _ Ev _ –”

“No, he’s right,” Zoe agreed. “You make  _ terrible  _ choices.” 

“I’m an asshole in reform! Bad decisions are what I’m  _ supposed _ to make!” 

“You’re not an asshole in reform,” Zoe seemed like she hit a wall of some kind. “You’re just an asshole, okay? And just because you’re hurting doesn't excuse that you’re hurting someone else, and just because you say ‘sorry’ doesn't mean we have to forgive you! You can’t expect us to just ignore the past and ignore the things that happened –”

The bell rang. It was officially lunch, officially when their club meeting was to begin, but nobody moved a muscle. Jared seemed to curl into himself, withdrawing from the conversation. 

Surprisingly, the first one to his defense was Evan. 

“You – you don’t get to talk to him like that,” Evan’s voice was shaky. “You don’t know us, you don’t know who we are or what we’ve been through, you  _ don’t _ get to say if I can forgive him or not. Maybe – maybe you shouldn’t project your problems onto an unrelated situation, okay?” 

Zoe was white-hot in her anger, which she could not even quite understand. 

“It’s not  _ my  _ fault you’re too much of a pushover to refuse an apology! I mean,  _ God,  _ Evan, you’re so naive. People like Jared don’t just  _ change! _ They try for like, a week, and then they fall right back into calling you mean names or banging on your door threatening to kill you! But  _ damn,  _ that week makes it all the harder, because you know they’re capable of kindness, and they don’t mean it, not really. But they  _ do,  _ Evan, they do! So you can enjoy your weeks when you get them, and the rest of the time you pretend it doesn’t exist, because at least that way it can’t hurt you. Don’t let him fool you, Evan. You  _ can’t.” _

Alana felt it was sort of like watching a car crash. No matter how badly you want to look the other direction, you can’t. 

Jared curled farther into himself, pulling his knees to his chest. 

God, how had this all spiraled so quickly? Just moments ago, Jared and Evan were figuring out things about themselves they’d never known, Alana and Zoe had been half watching some Hallmark movie, it had been  _ good.  _

Couldn’t they have? Just one relaxing, normal day? 

“Screw...screw you, Zoe!” Evan was pink in the cheeks, picking nervously at his cast. “C’mon Jared, let’s go to the cafeteria –”

“It’s fine,” Jared had unwound himself as soon as he was in Evan’s field of vision, and Alana did  _ not  _ want to unpack that, but there he was with his usual relaxed grin and laid back attitude. “You can stay, I’ll go. I don’t want to be where I'm not wanted.” 

“Jared –” Alana wasn’t sure what to say, but she had to say  _ something.  _

“It’s  _ fine, _ Alana. God, don’t you have a book to hide behind or something–”

As soon as the words had left Jared’s mouth, he turned ghostly white all over again. “I’m sorry, I –” He started to speak, his heart caught in his throat before running out the door. 

Evan whirled on Zoe, his eyes on fire even as he fidgeted with anxiety. “What – what the hell is  _ wrong  _ with you?” 

_ “Me? _ I’m not the one who –”

“No, you – you don’t get to talk right now.  _ I’m _ talking now,” Evan seethed. “You – you have no right to talk to him that way. Not after – you weren’t there last night. He has spent  _ seven years  _ hiding from – from something about himself that he thought was wrong and unnatural, hiding from it with sarcasm and a shitty sense of humor. Does that – does that excuse him? No. Does – does it mean I have to forgive him? No. But I want to, because – because he’s my friend, because he’s been  _ hurting,  _ because he’s trying to do better! And – and that’s all you can expect.” 

“You’re being naive!” Zoe snapped. 

“No – no, I think you are,” Evan was quiet, continuing to pick-pick at his cast. “Because you think people are one thing or another, good or bad. You don’t think people are capable of change. And that’s – that’s really sad. I’m sorry that life has made you think that way.” 

“You’re going to get hurt. He just had a relapse into being an asshole by treating Alana the way he did!”

“And he apologized immediately after. And it was only after being pushed to a breaking point – by you, I might add!” Alana was done. “Everybody out. We’re done with whatever the hell this is for the day.” 

“Fine by me,” Zoe huffed. 

“I’m going to find Jared,” Evan ran out of the room, unsure of where to even begin to look. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’d say i’m sorry, but i’m really not. what was i gonna do, give everyone a break? especially since there’s such a smooth segue from focusing on jared to focusing on zoe...not that jared’s development is over. clearly.   
> connor spent this chapter refreshing discord every 15 minutes to see if loreax had said anything and reading hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. for the record.


	16. connect.

Connor was having the kind of day where he could create and create and go on creating forever and ever. The words were pouring out of him, and there was an almost-tugging in his gut, compelling him to spill more and more and more on the page, giving more and more and more of himself until there was nothing left, until all that he was and all that he could have been was laid out for the world to see. 

And then came the process of hiding after. Changing the words a little to hide a deeper meaning that he wasn’t sure he wanted the world to see, trying to string together words in a way that made it impersonal. 

It was  _ impossible,  _ to say everything he wanted to say and nothing all at once. He could write for a million years and never come close to touching the pit that lives in his stomach, that festers and grows no matter how he tries to tame it. 

Still, he would try. He tugged on the strings of words, weaving them together in the only way he knew how. He knew it was littered with typos, unprofessional, the sort of thing only a disastrous self-taught high schooler could write, but it was  _ his.  _ This was a world in which nobody could interfere, with words that only he could create, because it was his and his alone. The words just flew around him, circling and forming into something new as he strung them together, sometimes doubling back and reworking and rewinding and yet collecting and combining into something new, something that nobody had ever created before. Even if all he was writing was a story that followed a thousand tropes, it was following those thousand tropes in a way that only his story could do, and that made it  _ special.  _

Connor loved words. Connor loved words in the same way that Zoe used to love stars, loved words in the same way that loreax loved trees, loved words in the same way that everyone had that  _ thing.  _ Because everyone does have that thing, that passion that lingers deep in their soul, the one thing that they could not live in a world without. Sometimes people take a little while to find it. Sometimes they never find it at all. 

But Connor knew what it was for him. Words, telling stories – that was  _ it  _ for him. That thing that he loved so deeply that he could not go without it. His passion. 

He wrote fanfiction sometimes, as a way to get people to read his writing. He usually had a bit more fun with that, studying characters typically overlooked and analyzing them too closely. He liked to pick apart the characters and see what made them tick, to try writing a million different styles and types of interaction all in an attempt to see what people liked and what people didn’t for when he went to his true passions, the original works that blazed bright little fires in his mind. 

If there was one thing in the world that Connor cared about, it was writing. That was the reason he’d liked theloreax originally – they hadn’t talked about anything but poetry and short stories for several weeks. But then theloreax had gone and disappeared for a short while, came back with a thousand typos from a broken arm – and with the turn the poetry had taken prior to said broken arm, Connor couldn’t say that he wasn’t worried. 

Which was. A weird, foreign feeling. 

So they’d started to talk about other things, the  _ real  _ things that happened in their lives. And Connor was worried, frankly. Because anxiety seemed like a right  _ bitch  _ to live with, and loreax seemed to really struggle with it. 

And here Connor was, his thoughts again circling around a person who he’d never met. Well, actually, no, that was a lie. Contrary to popular belief, Connor  _ wasn’t  _ an idiot. He knew he was talking to Evan Hansen. 

It couldn’t have been more obvious. The anxiety, the broken arm, even the thing for trees – but it wasn’t like Connor could  _ say  _ anything. Because like, alright, great, Evan has anxiety. And he’s told esspresso_depresso like, a lot of really personal things. 

But. 

Connor Murphy was just the scary boy in the back of the classroom, right? He was the school stoner, resident asshole, the kind of person who almost gives people like Evan panic attacks in the hall when they give them a little bit of help. 

So the plan was to befriend Evan, to try to be the kind of person that makes Evan not want to run away. And then, and only then,  _ maybe  _ Connor would admit to being esspresso_depresso. 

**theloreax:** I need help. I really need help. 

**theloreax:** I think I really fucked something up. 

**theloreax:** There’s this girl, and she said some really awful things to car insurance man, and now nobody can find him. 

**theloreax:** I don’t know what to do, i can’t lose him, i can’t let this all fall apart so quickly, it’s all going to fall apart and i don’t know how to help him because all i could fucking do is yell at her, what the fuck is wrong with me, i don’t know what i jshoul

**esspresso_depresso:** breathe, please

**esspresso_depresso:** have you checked his house? maybe start there?

**espresso_depresso:** and trust me, with the yelling thing...i’ve been there. don’t blame yourself. if anything, do the opposite. congrats, anxiety man, you’ve successfully yelled at another human being. car insurance man should appreciate that you’ve been willing to do that for him

**theloreax:** Thanks, esspresso

**theloreax:** I just...I don’t want to, I couldn’t bear to lose these friends I’m finally making

**esspresso_depresso:** i’m sure your new friends feel much the same

**esspresso_depresso:** now go help car insurance man. 

Connor took a shaking breath, chewing his bottom lip with concern. The metallic taste of blood seeped between his teeth, but he couldn’t focus on it as he thought. 

**con-man:** what the hell did you do, zo?

**zuzu:** how the fuck did you hear about it already?

**zuzu:** i told jared ‘sorry’ doesn’t cover it with how long he’s been an asshole

**zuzu:** evan and jared are just blowing it out of proportion, and so is alana

**zuzu:** i was just looking out for evan

**con-man:** that wasn’t your call to make, those two have like, the most weird nuanced friendship i’ve ever seen

**zuzu:** like you’ve even seen a lot of friendships?

**zuzu:** evan needed to know there are other options than ‘i forgive you’

**con-man:** okay that hurt a little bit but seriously

**con-man:** you fucked up

**zuzu:** and you earned the right to judge me where…?

**zuzu:** you are the one who has blown things out of proportion, always

**zuzu:** you’re the problem

**con-man:** at least i can admit that i’m a problem

It took every ounce of Connor’s will to not rip through the short story he was writing. 

It was an old one, one he’d told Zoe when they were kids. It was about a bridge of stars that connected two siblings even when they were separated. According to the story, so long as the same stars shone in the sky where they both lived, they could find each other. 

Young Connor had been  _ stupid. _

Older Connor had given up. 

Neither were right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i’m supposed to be finishing the script for this musical my friends and i are writing,,,like, first draft is supposed to be done by the end of the week so basically i’m probably gonna just disappear?? for a hot sec because i’m only part of the way through act one and we wanna be able to start working on the music itself soon (i get to write the lyrics and it’s super fun ehehehe) but basically bye for the next like,,,two weeks. when i’m back!! i’ll get to write on an actual laptop!!! and who knows i may end up with that mythical thing called an ~update schedule~ who knows  
> probably not tho. i have a tendency to sit and write when i feel like it and post the chapter as *soon* as i finish writing it with zero editing because otherwise i’ll panic and delete the whole thing and rewrite it like 40 times so that’s like yikes.   
> hhh anyway this is long and rambling and i’m gonna go before i regret this even more byeeeee


	17. Monty Python Presents: The Curse of Strahd

_ Once upon a time, there was a song. And that song was the world, and the world was the song. It was, and it was, and it was.  _

_ The song was alive, though it was not much of a life. It changed and it grew and it shifted with energy, but it was alone in its existence. It was a melody without harmony, a voice with no accompaniment. And although it was beautiful, it could not stand the loneliness.  _

_ And so the song divided into two parts – equal and opposite, they complimented each other and could not exist alone. This was the birth of the first binary star, Albireo. And they were, and they were, and  _ they  _ were.  _

_ And this, too, in time, was not enough.  _

_ Albireo set out to create more.  _

_ The first piece created the rolling hills and flowers, placing a blazing sun in the sky and a rhythm in every heart. They formed the deepest fires of the earth, placed a spark of passion among those who could create, and told them that they are creation, and they will go on being creation for so long as creation exists.  _

_ The second piece was not certain yet what they wanted to create. They waited, and listened, and they saw a world that imitated Icarus at every turn. Passion clashed, and creation raged against creation.  _

_ So the second piece rose up, and with them so too did the moon. The sun was extinguished, and for every flower there was a snowflake that would brush against it and beget withering. The blazing summer turned to winter, water spread across the earth to mitigate the danger of fire. They placed a stillness into the world, the icy quiet of calm. You are human, the second piece said, and to be human is to be fleeting. That which is most precious in this world is fleeting, and so too shall your lives be – this will make every moment precious, even those which sting the most.  _

_ So Albireo sat among the heavens and watched their world tumble between opposites, each life too fleeting and each creation too different from one and other. Passion still clashed, summer still blazed, but then stillness overcame, and winter froze. There were opposites, but there was no balance.  _

_ The pieces of Albireo then worked together. They built a bridge of stars across the sky, tiny points of their fused power, and promised to provide peace to both the blazing passion and the soft calm. They created fall and spring, times of moderation and mediation. They looked out on their creation together, and they promised that their creation would be beautiful because it was both eternal and fleeting, calm and passionate, nothing and everything.  _

_ And then Albireo went out to enjoy their creation. They were born, and they died. They lived, and they loved, and they lost. And through it all, they stayed in close proximity. Twins, friends, partners in crime, they always had each other.  _

_ Even when they were apart, the stars would guide them back together.  _

_ And Albireo split into another piece, then another, then another. Suddenly, Albireo could look around, and there was always someone beside them.  _

_ Albireo was not alone. They never would be alone again. They were a thousand contradictions – confident and insecure, lost and found, happy and sad.  _

***

School ended, and Evan was instantly booking it out the door and down the street. He was on a quest to see Jared, no matter what. 

He didn’t bother to knock at the front door, instead going right for the key which was hidden under the porch steps. He slipped in, and immediately noticed the light that was on in Jared’s room at the top of the steps. 

Good, he was home. 

Evan slid the key back into its proper place, slipping quietly up the stairs and into Jared’s room. Jared was, of course, playing a ranked match. It was what he  _ always  _ did to relieve stress. Evan was irritated at himself for not realizing sooner. 

“I’ll get to you when I  _ can,”  _ Jared fumed. “Maybe instead of yelling at me to be a better healer, you could just not get hit? How do you like the sound of  _ that?” _

Evan sat quietly next to Jared for the duration of the match, not even bothering to speak. He was, of course, at the other gaming PC in the room – it was one of Jared’s old ones, from before he’d built his own. He kept it because he was ‘too lazy to take it to Goodwill’ – he just wanted to be able to play with Evan. 

The match finished, and Evan booted up the game with barely a word. He hopped into a game with Jared, waiting for the rest of their usual party to fill in. 

Contrary to what most people expected, Evan was actually the team’s tank. He and Jared worked as the best team the party had, capable of communication without speaking when they properly got into the flow of a game. Jared was the best player in the party, and he ran support in almost every game. 

Jared wasn’t in a place to talk right now. Not about the stuff that mattered. And Evan...well, Evan  _ wanted  _ to talk. But he got not being able to. 

But Evan was going to do what he failed to in the past, and stick around to listen. 

***

Alana was...really  _ fucking  _ tired. The kind of tired that clings to your bones and runs warmly through your blood, weighing on your heart like the sins that cling to your mind and never let go. 

She was overwhelmed. Everything was too  _ much.  _ She was glad to be home, she could retreat to her room and write. That way, she could retreat to her own little world for just a little bit. 

The world was on fire, and Alana was terrified that she would burn with it. Jared was crumbling, and Alana didn’t know how to help him. Zoe was struggling, and Alana didn’t know how to help her and Connor return to the way they once were. And Evan was – well, Evan was Evan. Alana couldn’t get a clear read through the anxiety. 

She just...had to do  _ something.  _ Because if she wasn’t doing something, she was doing nothing. And if she was doing nothing, she was failing the people around her, she wasn’t enough. She had to provide something, give them a reason to keep her around. 

She couldn’t write. Not right now. Right now, she had to focus on other things. Her grades – she had to keep those up to not disappoint her parents. She also needed to figure out what to do to help her friends. 

Well, no. They weren’t friends yet. She wasn’t really adequately close with any of them yet for that.  _ Acquaintances.  _

She’d earn her way to friendship eventually. Grabbing a pen and paper, she bit her bottom lip, making a list. 

_ Time to get to work.  _

***

“I fucked up,” Zoe held her head in her hands. “I’ve cooled down and I realized that I  _ really  _ screwed up. I was just – angry? Scared? I don’t know. I just – I don’t know –” 

“It’s okay,” Connor was a tad uncomfortable, scooting slightly closer to Zoe and fidgeting with his hands slightly. “Look, I –” He sighed. “I kinda get what you’re talking about. Everything turns – not red but like, sharp, and you just want to do whatever you can to make it not sharp. And then it spirals out of your control. Right?” 

“Kind of?” 

“You could try apologizing. That may help. I – I don’t know, I make the messes, I don’t clean them up.” 

“Yeah, no kidding.” Zoe sighed. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, when was the last time you actually said ‘sorry’?” 

“When was the last time you’d give a damn if I did?” 

“I always cared! You just stopped meaning it!” 

“I never stopped meaning it! I never stopped – dammit, Zoe, do you really think that of me?” Connor was quiet, and he curled closer in on himself. 

“I –”

“Fuck it. If I’m such an insincere, deplorable person, you’d be better off fixing this problem on your own. Sorry to get in your way.” 

He rose, quietly stalking out of the room. 

***

“Jare, I need –”

“I’m on it, Ev –”

The glow of the game continued late into the night, the sky turning to a starscape as they played match after match, falling into the nearly wordless flow of the game. 

“What the hell are you  _ doing,  _ Birdie?”

“My fucking  _ best, _ Jared!” 

As much as the party hated each other, they made an excellent team. Besides, none of their insults actually meant anything. That’s what Jared thought, anyway. 

But easily Jared’s favorite part of playing like this was to see Evan, who was –

“Alright you peon, you plebeian, you absolute coward, try to land a hit on Jare  _ now!” _

– well, Evan was really invested. 

“Did you really just waste your special move on  _ that?” _

“They were about to kill Jare, Birdie, and he’s our healer! This is basic strategy –”

“Don’t you ‘basic strategy’  _ me _ , Ev!” On the other end of the mic, their primary dealer paused. She took a breath, pressing forward once again, “and can you cover for Mac? She’s about to get hit.” 

There was a brief silence again as the fray continued. 

They eventually won the match, and Evan gave a slight sigh. 

“Alright, Jared and I need to go now. There are a couple of things that we need to talk about.” 

“Alrighty, make good choices! Good work today.” 

They both logged off, and Evan turned to Jared. 

“Are you ready to talk about it now?” 

“Not particularly,” Jared rolled his chair over to his bed, flopping onto it with a sigh. “I just...think she might be right. The  _ first day _ after I say I’m going to change, I lash out at Alana. That doesn’t – doesn’t bode well.” 

“Do you remember when I ran the  _ Curse of Strahd  _ module? I hid from the party that we were even  _ running  _ a module, because I didn’t want them to metagame it. I worked so hard to make sure that nobody knew what we were planning, and you found out anyway. You didn’t tell anyone else, and you even went so far as to avoid a paladin or cleric intentionally because you knew that was what I was trying to avoid.”

“How did you know that I knew?” Jared was quiet. “I never told you that.”

“No,” Evan had a small smile. “You – you never did. But I knew, because I knew that your character prior to finding out was a cleric. Because you love to play a healer, even if you don’t like to admit it to people. You took an  _ entire character _ and you threw it out because you knew I didn’t want that for the campaign. And that – that’s not the kind of thing a bad person does.”

“I –”

“And do you remember when you ran a campaign? You only did it once, but it was when I was struggling to talk my way though a session because I was nervous about the other members in our party. When you noticed that it was too dark a campaign and we weren’t having fun, you managed to flip the entire tone at the drop of a hat because you wanted to make us smile. It went from like,  _ Dark Souls _ to  _ Monty Python and the Holy Grail _ in the span of a single session. And a bad person wouldn’t want to make people smile and laugh that much, wouldn’t throw all their work away for the sake of a couple of shoddy jokes.” 

“But I’ve been such an  _ ass. _ To more than just you. It’s like, God, I couldn’t even tell my friend that he’s my  _ friend –” _

“Shut the fuck up. Please.” 

Jared blinked at Evan. 

“Look, brains can say – they can say really stupid things to you sometimes. Especially when there’s a part of you that you – that you don’t really want to acknowledge, because it scares you, because you think that if you admitted to it, other people would hate it. And it builds, and it compounds, and it makes you crazy because you know that they’ll find out eventually but even so you don’t want them to know, you want to cling to what you have for as long as you possibly have because what you have is  _ good,  _ and it may be one of the only good things that has ever happened to you.” 

Evan took a breath before starting again. “Okay, so I’m doing that whole ‘word vomit’ thing again. My point is that you’re going to have complicated feelings, and thoughts that say really awful things about you, and maybe sometimes they’ll keep you up at night because you can’t help but remember how awful they are and how awful you are. And it stings, and it curls in your stomach and chokes the words from your voice when you’re afraid. But there are people who’re there to help. People who will notice that you’re bothered, even if you don’t tell them, and they go out to get ice cream with you when you can’t sleep, they go out to look at the stars even though they don’t even like astronomy much because they know it makes you smile to be out among the trees like that, they’re  _ there.” _

“And there are people now. People who are around you. People to lighten the load. I’ve – I’ve not done a great job in the past. With helping you. Because I was stupid, and I didn’t think that there was any chance that you needed help. But I’m not going to do that again. I’m here, and I’ve moved forward, and I’m not making the same mistakes. And you’re here, and you’re moving forward, and you won’t make the same mistakes either.” Evan smiled quietly. 

“But what if I do?” 

“That’s when I’ll be there to show up and tell you you’re being stupid. And you’ll be there if I start to get into my own head too much and fall back into my whole ‘I’m the only person in the world with problems’ thing. We – we help each other. We’re family friends, it’s what we do.”

“...Yeah. Thanks, Ev.”

“Any time, Jare.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as it turns out with enough determination and caffeine it’s possible to write an entire first draft of a script within 4 days


	18. alphabet soup

Exceptional. 

Alana Beck  _ had  _ to be exceptional. To that rule, there were no exceptions. It had started when she was a kid – a  _ child, _ the word ‘kid’ was below her, she wasn't supposed to use informal language in such a way. 

Alana was reading young. Younger than anyone she knew – her brother had been learning how to read, and Alana had picked it up while sitting in the same room. Reading had been  _ everything  _ to her. It was as intrinsic to her being as breathing. 

Her family had noticed, of course. She was reading full books by kindergarten but she couldn’t recite the alphabet – and still she was to be ‘exceptional’. 

“You’ll be great, Alana,” her father had told her. “You’re going to go down in the history books. You like reading? You’re going to  _ love  _ math, and science. You’re going to grow up to be a great scientist, a revolutionary mathematician.” 

Alana also knew the word ‘mathematician’ before she knew the alphabet. 

Alana was put into accelerated classes from a young age. She was advised to skip grades, and her mother had fought her father tooth and nail to keep Alana with the other kids her age. 

“She deserves to have a social life! She needs friends, can’t you see you’re isolating her?”

“I’m going to make sure she’s challenged, that she ends up getting what she deserves!”

“She sure as hell deserves better than  _ this!” _

Alana didn’t like being in her house. There was too much fighting. So she remembered the route from her house to the library. She took the bus home, and instead of going into the house, she toddled down to the children’s section of the local library and reached for whatever she could find. She took solace in the comforting words, weaving worlds around her. 

Her parents hadn’t noticed. They both got home from work at six every day, and Alana calculated to make sure she was home by five forty-five. She always got weird looks from the librarians, but she didn’t care. The librarians were nice to her. They’d let her eat even if she wasn’t supposed to in the library, as long as she stayed neat – they even snuck her cookies on Fridays. 

There were whispers that followed whenever she’d walk into and out of the building, but she didn’t much care. She clung to her books, always carrying old ones in, new ones out, and reading entire stories somewhere between. She fell in love with stories, finding herself lost in the characters that she could always relate to better than the other kids at school, the kids who didn’t have expectations from them before they knew the alphabet. 

The first story she’d ever  _ really  _ fallen into was the Mysterious Benedict Society. It was second grade, and she read these characters who were ‘exceptional’ who could not rely on the adults around them, because they had been failed by society. But they didn’t give up, and they used their skills to make things better for the people who came after. 

For the first time, Alana could read a book and say with certainty that there were other people in the world who were like her. She’d need to find them, that was all. 

In third grade, Alana fell into Harry Potter. Her favorite character wasn’t Hermione, as people seemed to always expect. No, Alana liked Draco Malfoy. He was a bad person who had been morphed into a bad person by bad parents, but in the beginning he  _ had  _ tried. Alana liked to think about what could’ve happened if Harry had been nicer to Malfoy in the beginning, prior to the Sorting, prior to the bullying and the unkindness. If Harry had helped Draco instead of judging him, maybe in the end Draco could’ve become a good person. Alana liked to think he would’ve been. 

People aren’t innately bad, they’re just taught to do bad things from a young age. People do bad things because they think they’re good – people hurt because they’re hurting. Alana believed that a lot of people were hurting. She also thought a lot of people made mistakes, and while those being mistakes didn’t make everything better, they also meant that they could be understood. 

So, with a philosophy borne of her own hyper-thought about a book, Alana dubbed herself a Gryffindor and moved forward with her life. 

Determination and courage suited Alana well. 

Middle school came, and Alana found someone else was visiting the library as regularly as she was. His name was Connor Murphy, and he was the kind of person who loved to read but hated that they did. He was a little mean, and he and Alana avoided each other. 

Still, Alana could tell a lot about him. Even if they were on opposite sides of the library, even if he was sticking to sci-fi and fantasy instead of the romance novels Alana had taken to, she knew him. There’s a lot you can tell by a person’s favorite books. And someone who read  _ Ender’s Game  _ and  _ Speaker for the Dead _ at least once every two months? Probably had a lot more empathy than they knew what to do with, probably desperately wanted to understand others and either did so too well, or didn’t even a bit. 

So Alana did something sneaky. She picked the books she thought he’d read, and leave little notes between the pages – sometimes she’d annotate or draw conclusions about the characters, analyzing them in that way where she’d draw the meaning out of them from nothing, sometimes she’d just wish him a good day. All of them were signed as ‘ α-bet’, because Alana thought a level of distance could keep her from screwing it up. Besides, Alana still couldn’t recite the alphabet. Her brain always got the order all scrambled, even if she knew all the letters  _ in  _ it. She would never admit it out loud. She thought it was sort of funny, even if it terrified her. 

She loved getting responses every now and again, flipping over the notes she’d left and seeing that something had been written in reply. It felt almost like having a friend. 

The summer before seventh grade her parents split up. The world kept turning. She stayed with her father, and her mother gave resigned encouragement to everything her father said. Her mother just...moved on with her life, and left Alana alone with her father. She tried really hard to not resent her mother. She knew it was bad for her mom to be in that house, same way it was bad for her. 

She failed. 

Because Alana knew it was  _ her  _ fault. She couldn’t keep up with her dad’s expectations and still have the happy, social life her mother wanted for her. She wasn’t enough. 

So Alana vowed to be more. She vowed not to fail anyone again. She vowed to be strong enough that people would stay. 

Seventh grade she started taking high school classes. She tripped and fell into a passion for languages, but she didn’t pay much attention to it. She stopped going to the library after school, only going on weekends. She barely wrote notes to Connor anymore. The librarians whispered about her still, but she couldn’t afford to care. 

She hated math and science, and yet she took Algebra I and Geometry in the same year anyway. Seventh grade was a special hell without an elective, but Alana couldn’t afford one. She needed to be better academically, needed to figure out how to make her father proud. She needed to  _ earn _ that pride. 

In eighth grade Alana took a schedule that was all high school classes with the exception of her language arts and history. That was sad, as those were the classes she enjoyed the most, but her father said they mattered the least, so those were the classes she got a ‘break’ in. 

She stopped going to the library, stopped writing notes all together. She confined herself to her room in the evenings, studying and doing homework for hour after hour. She got about four hours of sleep every night – on the nights she was lucky – and the rest of the time she was running on tea and determination. 

But tea wasn’t as bad for you as coffee, right? And besides, she was getting more than enough sleep on the weekends. That would compensate. She could get plenty of sleep after college, after she was finally good enough. 

She took the PSAT for the first time in eighth grade. She got a perfect score on the English portion, of course – she got a six-hundred in the math. Her father took her phone and laptop for that, saying she needed to focus more on her studies. He took her library card, too, when he noticed her disappearing to her old hiding place too much. 

Alana was tired. She was so deeply tired that she was losing herself in it. Her freshman year of high school passed in a daze of three AP classes and unbelievable pressure – she could barely remember it in the haze, and she certainly didn’t learn anything from it. 

She desperately needed a break. She needed sleep, she needed friends, she needed a respite but didn’t know where to find one. So she did what anyone sane does – throwing herself into the things she still has love for. She learned as many languages as she could stuff into her head, and she read books until reading stopped appealing. She started writing instead. 

She also found that video games were... _ excellent  _ stress relief. So in the dead of night, she’d sign on and play. She’d lose herself in the strategy and the voices echoing through her headset, priding herself on the fact that she was excellent through her own work. 

Determination and courage – she’d do Gryffindor proud yet. 

She continued to not sleep, continued to push herself academically. She wanted so desperately for someone to notice her, for her to have earned the attention of someone,  _ anyone,  _ but nobody ever noticed. 

So Alana kept working. That was all she could do – all she knew  _ how  _ to do. 

She got her shit together. She finally taught herself the fucking alphabet. 

And in the dead of night (or after school, she was finding) she would lose herself in games. To a degree, she made friends. She played regional games, so she knew whoever she played with probably lived relatively near where she lived. She never bothered to meet them. She assumed they wouldn’t want to meet her. 

She founded a poetry club. She noticed people were hurting, and she knew words were the only way she could stop the hurting for herself. She reached out to someone that could’ve been her friend, once, if she hadn’t screwed up. She knew he was hurting, ‘cuz he was hurting other people. She still wanted to help. 

It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. She was alone, she’d always end up alone –

Her phone buzzed. Jared had texted her to go outside. She wiped her eyes, put her glasses back on, and pulled herself together. 

And there he was, illuminated by the stars that shone overhead. Jared seemed almost nervous, and yet – and yet he wasn’t. 

“Hiya, Al. We need to talk. Well, I need to apologize – for a lot of things. Like knowing who you are and not saying anything. For what I said earlier. Really for just generally being an asshole. So hop in – we’re getting ice cream. Or cookies – I know a good middle-of-the-night tea and cookies place.” 

“Do you  _ ever _ sleep?” Alana spoke before she could stop herself, immediately wanting to put a hand over her mouth and take back the words. 

“Nope. Waste of time, I’d say. I get like, what, an hour, two a night? Better than you seem to.” 

“I –”

“Don’t kid yourself, Al. We all know you don’t take great care of yourself.” 

“Well, that’s fair. I just have never quite seen the point when there are other things I can be doing.” 

“Well screw  _ that.”  _ Jared huffed as Alana climbed into the car. “You’ve got friends now. I can like, text you to go to bed at night, or to eat dinner or whatever. If you need it. Because I know that left to his own devices Evan tends to forget to eat – like, legitimately just forgets to feed himself, it’s  _ wild –  _ so I can help you if you, like. If you want.” 

Alana felt something claw its way through her chest. She wanted to say yes, desperately, but that would be overstepping her boundaries and acting like Jared actually wanted to be her  _ friend,  _ which was just presumptuous. 

“I – I’m fine. I just need to be more careful is all.” 

“Bullshit.” Jared’s tone was still upbeat as ska played in the background. “You, Alana Beck, need to get some fucking self esteem. Or some friends who will tell you that you’re great until you believe it. Frankly, I’m willing to stand in for both. I’ve got a killer resume, and a letter of reference from the High King of Anxiety – Evan Hansen himself. So feel free to lean on me if you need it.” 

“But I haven’t  _ earned _ it yet –” the words were slipping from Alana, and she couldn’t stop them. “I haven’t earned the right to be your friend, I’m still just the bookish nerd who nobody really likes or knows or wants to know. I’m That Kid who reminds the teacher that there was homework, I’m the weird girl who hides in the library, I –”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up about my friend like that, who do you think you are? You think you can shit talk Alana Beck like that in front of me and get away with it? I’ll have to call up Connor if you keep talkin’ like that, and trust me, he throws a  _ mean  _ right hook.” 

Alana was absolutely gobsmacked. 

“Look, I’m not – not good at this stuff. But the point is that you, like – you don’t expect us to  _ earn  _ your friendship, right? We don’t have to earn the right to breathe the same air as you, to be in your proximity, to care?” 

“No! Why on  _ earth  _ would you think that –” Alana rushed out, her heart hammering in her chest. 

“I’m proving a point, brainiac. We like  _ you.  _ Not the stuff you do, or the things you’re capable of. And I’m sorry for being an asshole, for saying awful things to you because of your academic standing, for – look, I’m an asshole in reform. And I’ve screwed up. A lot. But I want to try – I want to try to be your friend, to have the right to do that? If you’re okay with that. And if you’re not, I’m still going to screw up to the Subterranean Sonnetists –  _ God  _ I hate that name – because it’s super fun, somehow(?) – but I also know I can’t force you to like me. That’s not how this sort of thing works.” 

“You really want to be my friend?” Alana’s voice was painfully quiet, almost shy. 

“Of course, dumbass. For the smartest kid in our class, you really  _ are  _ slow. Now, what flavor ice cream do you want? And I know it’s not vanilla. You could convince the others, but I’m a master of bullshit – that means I can see through other people’s. So what do you actually like?” Jared stepped out of the car as Alana did the same. 

“I like...I like cotton candy,” Alana’s cheeks burned. “I know it’s childish, I –”

“Nice. I figured as much. You and Connor really  _ should  _ be better friends – ice cream flavors are better windows to the soul than eyes. And childish isn’t a bad thing. Grown ups suck. Here’s to never growing up?” Jared grinned, holding the door for Alana dramatically. 

Alana rolled her eyes as she followed, a small smile brushing across her face. “Yeah, growing up  _ sucks.”  _

It was...nice. To go out with a friend. 

Nicer than any of the hollow half-praise that her Dad gave her once a blue moon. Nicer than the smell of old books. Nicer than anything Alana had ever known. 

She wanted to hold on to this feeling forever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uhh alana and jared are really great as a friendship dynamic because they play really well into each other's growth?? and i didn't realize it until i sat down to write this, but alana is just the perfect storm of insecurities, and jared is learning how to recognize that in others, and the both are going to be able to grow a lot from having friends, so whoops here's an entire chapter of alana being unhappy before throwing a jared into it for some bonding.  
> is...is jared zuko?? is jared going to have a zuko trip with everyone in this fic??? is that the path i'm going down???? apparently it is.


	19. Threads of Fate

Evan went home after his little chat with Jared, feeling drained and the deepest type of tired he’d ever felt. 

He was walking home – of  _ course  _ he was, he had killer endurance from spending almost all his time outside, plus he didn’t want to bother Jared by asking for a ride, even if Jared had offered. 

The truth was that Evan  _ needed  _ to walk home, he needed to get fresh air and the almost-crippling quiet, he just needed –  _ something.  _

The weight of the day was crashing around him. He’d  _ yelled _ at  _ Zoe,  _ he’d honestly had a conversation with Jared, he told Connor details as esspresso that linked him to Evan. 

God, he’d fucked up. He’d fucked up  _ so bad.  _

If charisma was his dump stat and it was  _ this low,  _ he had to be really good at something, right? That’s how that works, right? 

Well apparently not because Evan  _ sucks.  _ Maybe he wasn’t even a player, he was just one of those NPCs that shows up at the beginning of the campaign just to die to the big bad so the party knows the big bad  _ is  _ bad. But there’s no big bad in life, so it’s instead just an awkward, unbelievably low stat block. 

The falling of his feet echoed like funeral drums in his ears. The streetlights flickered, each of them perfectly spaced, casting an artificial light on his face. 

One foot fell, then another. One shoe dropped, then the other. 

The other shoe always dropped. 

***

Once upon a time, Connor loved to sew. Cross stitch, specifically. 

He loved watching the image weave together and color in, the repeating motions together creating a little moment in time. 

He’d listen to Khachaturian and thread a scene, letting the words of a story swell to the surface, passing through his head like a daydream. 

The thread and music would play against each other, and together they would tell a story. Connor believed stories could not be told alone. All stories are collaborations between the author and the reader – that is why a story means something different to each reader, why stories are different each time they read it. 

Sewing had actually been an introductory course in writing to Connor – rework the words if they tangle together, make sure that the tone of the threads all match, a thousand tiny stitches will tell a story with more color and definition than five messy ones, but they’ll take more time and often have to be reworked once or twice. 

He’d lost interest in it about halfway through middle school. Lost interest in most things, honestly. 

But sewing. He used to love sewing. And reading. He  _ loved  _ reading, and loved the little notes he’d find in books in the library. 

He and his sister were close, once upon a time. Why had he gone and screwed that up? The threads had gone and gotten tangled while he’d been paying attention to other things. 

But he screws things up, that’s  _ kind of  _ what he does. A lot. And he doesn’t understand why it still surprises him every time he does –  _ clearly  _ it doesn’t surprise Zoe anymore. 

The threads were coming undone. Somewhere along the way, his thread had snapped and now all his work was coming unraveled. He couldn’t  _ write,  _ he couldn’t  _ think,  _ he just  _ couldn’t – _

**theloreax:** The void could swallow me whole and I wouldn’t give a damn

**esspresso_depresso:** lol mood

**theloreax:** Do you wanna watch some Harry Potter at the same time and run a sarcastic commentary until we both fall asleep? 

**esspresso_depresso:** hell yeah u slytherin disaster

**theloreax:** Shut up you ravenclaw mess

**theloreax:** Also to revisit our conversation about the houses that the people in our lives go into?

**theloreax:** As it turns out, Car Insurance Man is probably a Hufflepuff. Weird. 

**esspresso_depresso:** huh

**esspresso_depresso:** surprising, but not too surprising

**theloreax:** Yeah that?

**theloreax:** Pick up where we left of with our last run, right? 

**esspresso_depresso:** order of the phoenix, full speed ahead!

**esspresso_depresso:** i’m 100% ready to cry!! 

**theloreax:** Sameeee

Evan curled around his phone, something at his center having turned gooey. All he’d ever wanted was a friend, someone who he could trust and who trusted him. And he sort of had one now, even if it was weird. 

He had several friends, actually. Though there was a part of him that said he always  _ did  _ have a friend, that he had failed Jared as much as Jared had failed him. He didn’t like to think about that part. 

How Jared had felt just as alone as Evan, maybe even more so. How if he’d just talked to Jared sooner, they’d have both been spared a lot of pain. 

**esspresso_depresso:** u ready?

**theloreax:** Hitting play in 3

**esspresso_depresso:** 2

**theloreax:** 1

**esspresso_depresso:** things are about to get...sirius

**theloreax:** For the love of all that is good please cease and desist

***

“So you honestly mean to tell me that you  _ can _ curse in fourteen languages but choose to curse in none of them?” Jared shot Alana a pained expression. “Your passion for languages is wasted.” 

“It’s less that I refuse to curse and more that I save it up. If I were to curse all the time, it would mean nothing, right? But I don’t curse ever, and I  _ never  _ curse in anything but English. So if I were to – for example – curse someone out creatively in Russian? That would  _ mean  _ something,” Alana smiled. 

“I can understand that. But at the same time, you’ve been holding out on us all this time?” 

“I don’t want to hear that from  _ you,  _ you’re a Gossip Girl knockoff waiting to happen,” Alana rolled her eyes. 

Jared let out an exaggerated gasp. “I would  _ never! _ Now, would I blackmail the principal so Connor doesn’t have to sit through detention for two weeks and the suspension is off his record? Maybe.” 

“But you’re not doing that for yourself?” Alana was almost surprised. 

“I don’t deserve it. Evan – he forgave me, but he probably felt like he had to, y’know? He doesn’t know how to say no – which worries me. But I hurt him because I was hurting, and he deserves so much  _ better _ than that. I kept saying things like ‘family friend’ because I wanted him to put his foot down and say something to the contrary, y’know? Something like ‘we really are friends!’ or even ‘you can’t treat me that way, Jared, that’s not true!’. I just wanted him to call me out on the bullshit  _ once,  _ and then I kept taking it farther and farther, and then I – I don’t even know what I wanted at that point. But I still feel bad about it.”

“I get it,” Alana gave a small smile from across the booth. “Sometimes, you’d do just about anything to get validation from the people you love, yeah? Even if it’s slowly killing you, you’d do anything to get them to love you back.” 

“Yeah,” Jared was quiet. “Exactly. But...you know that you  _ are  _ my friend, right? And if there’s someone in your life who’s treating you wrong, I  _ will not hesitate  _ to kick their ass. Or ask Connor to kick their ass. Or just blackmail the shit out of them.” 

“Being the smart kid  _ sucks ass.”  _ Alana stood, her expression softly angry. “I’m getting a cup of ginger-turmeric tea. You want anything?” 

“Tell them that I want the Jared Special. They  _ should _ have it written down.” 

Alana returned a couple of minutes later, two steaming cups in her hands. “You know drinking things like that are going to kill you one day, right? Mortals were not made to consume that much caffeine and sugar.” 

“I’ll ascend beyond this mortal plane and speak to God of his inadequacies as I drink the nectar of the gods,” Jared deadpanned. 

“You are a genuinely bizarre human being,” Alana snorted. “Is this what it’s like to be friends with someone?”

“I think so. It fuckin’ rules, doesn’t it?” Jared sipped at his monstrosity of a drink. 

“Something like that,” Alana smiled warmly, and in that moment she looked like the smell of old books by candlelight – peaceful, soft, and warm. It was the most like Alana that Alana had ever looked. 

“So...Star Wars or Star Trek?”

“Firefly,” Alana rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

“Thank  _ goodness,” _ Jared sighed. “You have  _ taste.”  _

***

Look in the mirror and what do you see?

Past a myriad of scars and angles,

what is left that remains?

Alone with a tapestry of all that I could be,

fixating on a single tangle. 

Why pull the thread if it all comes undone?

A star comes undone and a constellation dies,

a slip of the tongue is a thousand lies,

a single string left out of tune,

a lone flower that fails to bloom,

all the furniture an inch to the left in a room –

a small imperfection leads to a life of pain.

Look in the mirror and who do you hate more;

the monster or the man?

***

Zoe wanted to throw something heavy at the wall. She settled instead for crumpling up her failed poem and throwing that. She wanted to cry, to scream, to yell and never stop. She couldn’t explain the feeling in her chest, the fiery, bubbling sorrow that came and went like the tides. Hot tears welled up in her eyes as she sunk into her bed. 

Nothing was  _ right.  _ Nothing was  _ working.  _ She couldn’t get a melody, lyrics, nothing was  _ right.  _

All she wanted was to curl up the way she did when she was younger, with her older brother and a cup of hot chocolate. They’d sit outside, and she’d point out the constellations and he’d tell her all the stories that the constellations were based upon. 

But they didn’t  _ do  _ that anymore. They hadn’t done it since Zoe had been in sixth grade, when they’d still been close, before Connor had changed and warped into a person that she couldn’t recognize. He was always angry, and when he wasn’t angry he was sad, and when he wasn’t sad or angry he was hollow. He’d give hollow apologies, he’d just float through his day and go on floating until he was right back to being sad and angry. And then this summer, he’d started talking to some  _ guy  _ online, and he was – not back to normal, but better? He was acting like an actual human again. 

And it wasn’t  _ fair.  _ Not when Zoe had tried for so long. Not when Zoe had tried to get her brother back and been met with rage and sadness and hollow apologies. It wasn’t  _ fair.  _

And she tried to warn Evan so he didn’t get his hopes up like she did back in seventh grade, waiting outside for hours and hours with hot chocolate and perfect memory of the stars on the night of a meteor shower that Connor had  _ promised _ they’d watch together. And he never showed up. 

And he did the same thing the year after. And the year after that, he  _ had  _ shown up – high. 

So Zoe had stopped trying, and she just didn’t want to see her new friend get hurt the same way by someone else who was similar, and it wasn’t  _ fair.  _ Not when  _ Connor  _ always got everyone’s attention. Not when  _ Connor  _ was Evan’s favorite, clearly, and Evan was Jared’s favorite, and Alana was off doing Alana things. Not when her dad and her mom were so busy worrying about if Connor was going to graduate that they didn’t notice her getting honor roll, or playing solos in jazz band, or going out in the middle of the night for  _ fucking  _ ice cream. But they noticed that Connor had been out, oh, of  _ course  _ they did. 

It wasn’t fair to Connor to be upset about this. It wasn’t his fault. He had legitimate, real problems. But honestly? Zoe was  _ tired.  _ She wanted her brother back. She wanted a family that noticed when she did anything. She wanted to be someone’s favorite person just  _ once,  _ or at least wanted to matter to someone, somewhere. 

But wishing on stars had never worked in the past. It wasn’t going to work now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire chapter is just ~friendship~ except for poor lonely zoe, who also kind of had it coming??? but also deserved better. can't wait for her jared field trip. which may not even happen but also probably will because they really gotta talk through some things??? who knows i'm literally making this up as i go lmao it's a mess of questionable quality


	20. theloreax

One day passed, then another. As a matter of fact, the entire weekend had passed without event –  _ somehow.  _ Nothing had gotten resolved. But Jared and Alana were like, best friends now, which was  _ weird.  _ Even weirder? How  _ quiet _ Evan had been. Offline, of course. Well, online too. After their little Harry Potter night, he’d gotten quiet. Nobody was actually talking, and it was  _ really  _ getting on Connor’s nerves. 

School Monday had fucking sucked because Evan was silent, and there was no club meeting and how weird was it that they were a club that had never actually had a formal first meeting? And everything was running together and falling apart in his head because that was just the  _ vibe.  _

He was tired. He was angry – not angry, frustrated. His head felt like someone had put a fog over it, something that dulled it and seeped between his bones that told him that nothing mattered, that he shouldn’t bother. It was the feeling that made him want to stay in bed every morning, warm, and soft, and fuzzy, but empty. A hollow comfort that hid something darker. 

He wanted to cry. He wanted to snap a pencil and scream. He wanted to cling a pillow to his chest and squeeze it as tightly as he could while white-hot tears poured down his cheeks. He wanted to leave the house and go into the cold night air and run, and run, and to go on running until he was somewhere he’d never been before, somewhere where his past mistakes wouldn’t follow him. He felt like he could open his mouth and yell and go on yelling forever and ever, until his voice was sore and dry and there was nothing left of him but dust that would float into the wind, not even a memory. 

But he didn’t do either of those things. Instead, Connor just took a deep breath and fell into his bed. The days when he felt like this were worse than the days he was angry, and worse than the days he felt empty. He was feeling too much, but it felt like all of those feelings had been put through a funnel and strainer so they were only a weird, mixed-together and watered down version of what he actually felt. Which was – frustrated? Sad? Angry?

Something formed in his throat, like the thousands of words he’d always wanted to say but never could had gotten stuck there all at once. 

He clung to the extra pillow sitting on his bed, finding it not fully enough before shifting it and finding it too fluffy before finding it to be  _ too much.  _ It was too much and not enough and  _ shit,  _ there’s Connor’s biweekly existential crisis, brought on by a fucking  _ pillow.  _

_ Why was he like this? _

A thousand apologies burned in the back of his brain like a wildfire, none of them seemed adequate. Not one of them said what he really wanted to say, they couldn’t convey the depth and frustration that threatened to choke Connor. 

A small rock knocked against his window. Then another. Then another. 

They wouldn’t fucking  _ stop.  _

His phone buzzed. 

**theloreax:** So

**theloreax:** Don’t hate me

**theloreax:** But we gotta talk

**theloreax:** So either open that window and look like goddamn Rapunzel

**theloreax:** Or get down here before I put a boulder through your window

**theloreax:** ...well  _ I  _ wouldn’t do that

**theloreax:** But Alana is here pusing here communication agenda and I brought pie

**theloreax:** And Jared is definitely threatening some window boulder-ing

**theloreax:** Also I’m Evan in case you haven’t guessed??? Hahaha yeah we  _ reallllllllly  _ gotta talk

**esspresso_depresso:** jesus  _ fucking  _ christ, ev

**esspresso_depresso:** of course i figured it out, but is this really? how you want to handle this?

**theloreax:** Well it was either I show up with Jared and Alana at midnight with a pie or I have a panic attack the next time we try to write stories in English because I’m paranoid you’ll recognize my style and I’ll not have a say in how you find out about all of this so.

**theloreax:** I think I made the right call

**theloreax:** But uh, please don’t be mad at me? If you are that’s fine too, I mean feel free to hate me forever if you want, I totally get it but I’d really rather be your friend if that’s alright by you, I mean you’re genuinely one of my favorite people a ndoa 

**theloreax:** this is jared. get ur fucking ass down here.

With a sigh, Connor dragged himself out of his room and out of the house. Frankly, his parents were so used to it by now that they didn’t even try to stop him. 

***

Evan was a bumbling mass of nerves. He’d been prepping for this for at least three days, gearing himself up for angry words and lingering hatred. But Jared and Alana had gone out bonding one night, and after that Jared had made it clear to Evan that Connor was going to find out one day, and it had damn well better be on Evan’s terms. 

So Evan scrolled through his history with Connor to see what his favorite pie was, he mentally prepared himself, he even tried to distance himself from esspresso_depresso a little bit so as to prepare himself emotionally for what was inevitably going to be a crushing loss of friendship. 

He  _ certainly  _ didn’t expect a hug. It was something warm, and soft, and Evan melted into it a little bit, even if his skin was tingling and he felt like someone had put a heating pad with the setting way too high in his chest. 

“You’re a dumbass, right? A real, genuine idiot. I fuckin’ hate you. You stupid disaster, I can’t believe you,” Connor hugged Evan even tighter. 

“I –”

“Why the  _ fuck  _ would I hate you?” Connor pulled away from Evan, who started furiously wiping at his eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You’re my best friend. Dumbass.” 

“I – I just –” Evan’s voice cracked as his face burned, hot tears pouring down his cheeks. “I was so  _ scared _ –”

“Not to be that guy,” Jared pushed his glasses up, “but I totally told you so.” 

“Shut up,” Alana hissed, nuding Jared in the arm. “They’re having a moment! And communicating for once!” 

“You’re doing that thing where you pressure us into communicating again, aren’t you?” 

“God forbid,” Alana rolled her eyes. “Not like it’s helped or anything.” 

“I set up Evan’s account,” Jared leaned on Alana’s shoulder. “So don’t you dare think he told me before he told you. I just managed to find out – plus I’m the local gossip, I know everything about  _ everyone.”  _

“And yet you didn’t know the word for your own sexuality,” Alana scoffed. 

“Are we really doing this  _ now?”  _

“I figured out it was Evan after about two days, so I couldn’t judge even if he had. I wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information,” Connor shrugged. 

“I figured out fairly quickly too, I was just nervous because with – well with how you responded to my poem, I was – well, you know how I get, you heard me ramble for three hours on if I picked the wrong  _ pizza topping  _ and if I thought the pizza guy was judging me for asking for extra sauce – wow you’ve seen me at my  _ worst  _ why do you even keep me around –”

“God, their dynamic is so different now that they admit they know each other,” Jared pushed himself up to the hood of his car, sitting with his legs swinging over the side. Connor was saying something in response to Evan, who was now laughing slightly through his tears. Good. Jared thought that Evan deserved someone who could do that. He patted the spot beside him, and Alana rolled her eyes as she clambered to follow him. 

“It’s almost like improved communication has improved their relationship,” Alana deadpanned. “Could you imagine?” 

“Inconceivable!” 

“I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Alana snorted. 

“Okay, but seriously, those two are like,  _ totally  _ gonna be a thing by the end of the year. I’m betting by New Year’s.” 

“Halloween, for sure. Do you honestly think Connor is going to be able to resist the whole ‘oh no you’re scared, let me help’ thing?” 

“Eugh. Remind me to have a talk with him about being respectful with Ev. Or to just cut to the chase and mow him down with my car. Because I do  _ not _ trust him.” 

“Would you trust anyone?”

“No. Humanity is sketchy,” Jared pinched his nose between his fingers. “I mean, have you  _ seen _ what the news looks like lately? I don’t want to go outside, much less anything else.” 

Connor was laughing about something. Evan was balancing a pie on his head. Jared couldn’t decide which was weirder. 

A light flicked on in the house. Jared made a choice. 

“Everyone get in the car. Connor? Text Zoe to meet us two corners down. I’ve got quite an adventure planned for us tonight,” Jared flashed a dangerous grin. “It will be one of the most dangerous, epic quests that we have ever embarked upon –”

“Dibs on aux,” Alana ducked into the passenger’s seat. 

“I get veto rights,” Jared declared. 

“No way in hell,” Evan ducked into the back seat next to Connor. “If he gets veto rights, he vetoes everything until they play what he wants!! Don’t fall for his trap.” 

“Compromise – we let Evan play whatever the hell he wants?” 

“No,” Jared’s eyes were wide with fear. “If you do that, he’ll just play meme songs, I  _ swear.  _ Last time he got aux in my car we ended up listening to a Cotton Eye Joe gregorian chant nightcore dubstep remix. Do you  _ know  _ how many kinds of cursed that is?” 

“Evan what the  _ fresh hell.”  _ Even connor couldn’t hide his disappointment at this turn of events. 

Evan just laughed slightly. “Ah, yeah. That was fun. I should demand aux rights more often.” Jared started driving as nobody had yet decided on what music to play. 

“You’re a monster,” Alana blinked. 

“Uh...thanks for noticing?” 

“But you’re not even from the fun bit of the Monster Manual,” Jared complained. 

“But we all know that the best monsters – y’know, death moths, unidentified flying bagels, the physical manifestation of anxiety that takes on a different shape for each person who witnesses its horror – those are  _ homebrew.” _ Evan smiled at Jared. 

“I forgot about the UFB’s!” Jared cackled. “That was in the last leg of our last campaign, right? When I was playing a gnomish artificer/cleric monstrosity?” 

“I was floored when you didn’t just cut the crap and play a forge cleric but you  _ clearly  _ were determined to multiclass so I went with it. Even though it was an objectively  _ terrible decision.” _ Evan snorted. “And I was ready to explain to you what the bagels were, what they had always been, and what they would always be. Even with the sacred SpongeBlade in your grasp, you could never have defeated the power of bagel.” 

“I’m sorry, the sacred  _ what?”  _ Connor sounded floored. 

“The SpongeBlade! We had to traverse the ocean floor to find it, even going so far as to defeat the power of the dreaded Ananas Cosmosus – the great Cosmic Pineapple of the deep.” Jared giggled. “I remember I had to cut it open with my dagger in order to obtain the blade within – as it turns out, D&D has the unique ability to be a fucking meme while being metal as fuck.” He parked the car, having reached the spot where Zoe was to meet them. 

“If we do a campaign, I reserve the right to be a barbarian. I wanna wreck a lot of shit at once, and I’ll do it however I must.” Alana smiled. “Of course, I’ll be a tactical genius of a barbarian, but a barbarian nonetheless.” 

“I’d like to DM if possible! It’s a lot of fun!” Evan was a literal ray of fucking sunshine. 

“Only if I get to be the obligatory edgelord rogue,” Connor agreed. 

“And I’ll be a forge cleric and do the build  _ properly  _ this time!” Jared added. 

“Can I be a bard?” Zoe slipped into the car quietly. “I solemnly swear to not seduce any dragons.” 

“That makes you the only valid bard to have ever existed,” Jared gave a small smile. “But yes, a bard would balance it out fairly well. Build ‘em like a magical girl and ruin Connor’s edgelord plans.” 

“I also have a homebrew paladin that you may like?” Evan offered. “The  _ Astrum Nauta  _ oath may be fun? A literal star sailor? Live the weeb dream and become a sailor scout in Dungeons and Dragons?” 

“Do it. Do it  _ now.”  _ Zoe demanded. 

“After my adventure!” Jared added. “Do it  _ after  _ my adventure! Which I took valuable time out of my day to day life in order to plan. Oh! And we only go on the adventure once Zoe apologizes to Connor and Connor apologizes to Zoe!” 

“...and you. Zoe needs to apologize to you as well.” Evan narrowed his eyes at Jared. “We’ve agreed that you’re going to stop punishing yourself for something that was as much my fuckup as yours,  _ right?”  _

“Well  _ yes –” _

“I’m sorry, Zoe.” Connor was the first to speak, much to everyone’s surprise. “I’ve said it a million times before, and I’ve  _ meant it  _ a million times before. I can’t – I can’t tell you why I’m like this. I don’t even understand it myself. I just know that there’s something  _ wrong  _ and I’ve  _ hurt  _ you and I’m so sorry. This summer I started – mom and dad decided to try therapy, after I asked. Between that and having an actual friend, it’s helped, and I feel the most like me that I’ve ever felt. And I can see how much I’ve hurt you, and I –” He took a shaking breath. “I get it if you hate me for what I did. I get it if you can’t forgive me. But I wrote something for you – and I want you to read it, even if you decide after that you want to hate me forever.”

“They’re taking you to therapy?” Those were the first words that slipped out of Zoe’s mouth. “They’re finally listening?” 

“As it turns out, Mom will put her foot down toward Dad when it comes to stuff that matters. There’s still a lot to work through. But I’m trying, Zo. More than I’ve tried with anything in my life. Well – no. That’s a lie. Because when it comes to making things up to you, I’m going to try as hard as I can for as long as I can, because you deserve better.”

“I hated you,” Zoe stated simply. “You were – you were ‘the bad guy’. My brother who I’d once been so close to – my brother who had inexplicably become so mean, who caused fights every night, who pounded on my door and threatened to kill me. And I didn’t want to think of you as anything more, because it hurt to think that my actual brother was in there – the one who let me ramble about the stars, who wrote me stories and made hot chocolate on the night of our favorite meteor shower. And it hurt even more when I did try and it felt like you were  _ gone.  _ Can you promise that you’re – that you’re here now? And you’re not leaving?” 

“You know as well as I do that I can’t promise that,” Connor was quiet. “But I’m going to try. Are you?” 

“I will.” 

“On that note!” Jared smiled widely. “Let’s get this show on the road. We’re going to the Autumn Smiles Orchard. Evan, do you remember what tonight is?” 

“It’s the  _ Autumnal Equinox,” _ Evan’s smile grew into something much more devious. “You brought what we need?” 

“What do you take me for?” Jared scoffed. “Oh, and Connor gets music. Since, y’know, we just forced him to have a Moment™ with his sister.” 

“How did you say that outloud?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jared sniffed. 

Connor reached for the aux cord, immediately blasting On the Hills of Manchuria. 

“You’re a classical music nerd?” Jared asked. 

“Only classical russian waltz, I’ve got a soft spot.” 

“Please tell me you listen to Khachaturian,” Alana begged. “I need a friend who has actual taste in classical. If  _ one more person  _ says their favorite classical piece is Vivaldi’s  _ Four Seasons _ I’m going to  _ scream.  _ Because  _ The Rite of Spring is so much better fuck you –”  _

“Thank you? For being an actual competent human being,” Connor sighed with relief. 

“Why would you listen to either when there is music from Coppelia and La Bayadere to listen to? Or Giselle?” Zoe tilted her head. “Music like that is always so much better if there’s  _ dance  _ involved –”

“Go away you pseudo-cultured swine,” Evan narrowed his eyes at Zoe. “That kind of music is nice to listen to, but you leave me and my Stravinsky alone. Also, The Rite of Spring was originally a ballet? So – so yeah!” 

_ “I’m trapped with a squad of nerds,”  _ Jared sounded appalled. 

“You’re part of a club of secret poets called the Subterranean Sonnetists, you play D&D, and you show up at midnight almost _every_ night for us to go out stargazing. You’re as much a nerd as we are.” Alana countered. 

“Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you need to say it!” Jared hissed. 

Once they arrived, Evan was bouncing on the balls of his toes as he faced Jared. This was the most excited he’d ever looked. “You picked a spot already?” 

“I’m not an  _ amature.”  _

“It’s the equinox!” Evan practically  _ squealed  _ as he followed Jared through the rows of apple trees, deeper and deeper into the woods. Jared held his telescope in his arms, a bulging backpack on his back. 

“It’s time,” Jared spoke menacingly as they entered a clearing. “Evan, do you want to explain?” 

“Each year on the Autumnal Equinox, Jared and I go deep into the wood. It started when we first played D&D and we wanted to do a campaign around an actual, legitimate campfire deep in the woods. My mom helped set it up, and we stayed out all night. We made it into a tradition. We started in the woods with our parents, but as we grew up and I got kick-ass at survival skills, we started doing it in less well known locations, and we started doing it on our own. In our – what, freshman year? We stopped doing dungeons and dragons. We started something else.” 

Jared took a match and lit the campfire in the middle of the clearing at that  _ precise _ dramatic moment. 

“Welcome to the – the quarterly burning. We take pieces of paper, we write down everything we hate, everything that frustrates us, everything that makes us mad at the world or the people around us. We write them down, write down everything we wish we could say but we’re too scared to. And then we burn that shit and vow to start fresh. Then we make s’mores and stargaze and sing along to musicals and vow to never speak of any of this again, especially not at school.”

“It’s really therapeutic to write a letter to the bitchy teacher who won’t credit you for your work because you turned it in after the bell rang and watch it burn in the fires of your hatred,” Jared smiled. “Who wants to start?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s time for some genuine chaos, don’t you think? Also the timeline in this story is a fuckin’ trainwreck lmao I swear I’ll fix it someday.


	21. Twilight

“Die, blasphemous idolatry!” Jared cheered, throwing a copy of Twilight into the fire. “Pagan worship to the false god of heterosexuality, begone from this plane!” 

“You’re  _ really  _ out here, burning books in front of  _ me _ ?” Alana was sitting next to the fire, clutching one of the thermoses of hot chocolate that Jared had brought. “My heart is crying out in anguish, even if it is for the sake of a book that does not deserve it.”

“Also? Should we even be insulting heterosexuality? Isn’t anyone here heterosexual?” 

“Ace?” Evan offered weakly. “And – and probably biromantic. So. That’s a thing.” 

“Rad. I’m demi,” Connor shrugged. 

“I like people? Don’t really think about it much, honestly.” Zoe took a sip of her hot chocolate. 

“I like books.” Alana deadpanned. “And...I dunno. Never really been a priority. I’ll get back to you once I’ve taken over the world and it’s time to reevaluate my life goals.” 

“If you end up aro, let’s get married for tax benefits,” Jared shot Alana finger guns, and Zoe rolled her eyes. 

“My  _ God  _ Jared, you can’t just propose to a girl with  _ finger guns -” _

“My bad, let me try again.” Jared fixed his shirt, running his fingers through his hair before grabbing a yellowed leaf off the ground. He got down on one knee, dramatically furrowing his brow. “Alana, will you marry me for tax benefits?” 

“I’ll marry you for tax benefits  _ if  _ you let me prewrite all of your speeches when I become president. As First Gentleman, you’ll have to keep a spotless reputation, naturally,” Alana picked the leaf from between Jared’s fingers, tucking it behind her ear. “And if I  _ do  _ manage to fall in love or decide you’re inadequate in any capacity, that’s that. We split all of our resources right down the middle, no fuss, and you just roll with it.  _ And _ we stay friends. That’s the most important condition.” 

“Agreed. However! If I start a tech company that’s incredibly successful before your political career takes off, do you still want to control what I say and when?” 

“Of course. It’ll be important for the PR of your company, which has a direct impact on my assets. You’re clever, but you’re  _ really bad _ at people,” Alana shrugged. 

“Why – why does it feel like – like we just watched one of the most dangerous business deals of all time?” Evan glanced at Zoe, who had flopped to a spot on the ground beside him. 

“We probably did. Alana is dangerous, and Jared is...Jared. They’re going to run the world someday – Jared is going to burn it to the ground, and Alana’s going to rebuild it.” Zoe sipped at her hot chocolate. “So we have a marriage for tax benefits over there, whatever the hell ends up going on between my brother and Evan, and I’m just alone like this? I’m suing the universe for emotional damages.” 

Evan spluttered at the implication, and Connor rolled his eyes. “We’re friends, dumbass.” 

“Do you hear that?” Zoe put a hand to her ear, and Jared and Alana glanced around as if hearing something in the wood. “It’s the sound of denial. Which is strange, because we’re not by a river in Egypt.” 

“Oh no,” Jared groaned. “Zoe, don’t tell me you like  _ dad jokes.”  _

“I was raised on a strict diet, dad jokes every day.” Zoe shrugged. “Not my fault.” 

“Larry ensured that was passed on to one of his kids, and I was always closer with Mom.” Connor glared at the fire. “Not that I’m close with either of them anymore.” 

“You’re working on it,” Alana poked at the fire with a stick, watching Twilight burn away to nothing as the fire cast a twilight-like glow around the clearing. “That’s all that really matters, right?” 

“No. What matters is if it’s fixed or not. Because I’m tired of ‘trying’ when nothing ever changes.” 

“It – it just loops, right? You try and you try and it’s not enough, but then you don’t try and somehow it manages to get worse. And you spiral because at least if it’s getting worse and you make the people around you miserable you can explain why you’re so miserable yourself,” Evan picked at the grass. “But – uh – that’s a really bad way of thinking? Because things have changed. We’re all friends now, which is pretty great? And like, you do so well with writing, and so many people think you’re good, and you’ve come really really far. So like, think of this stuff as your writing – with every chapter you figure out your style a little more, right? The identity of your book? And by the end of it you have a whole book and a whole style, and through the first draft you can see where you improved and where you need to keep improving, but you’ve figured out the book, and you’ve gotten better, and you’ve made people happy in the process. But that’s only the first draft, so you open a new doc and you try again, but you go back to your first version for a point of reference for what worked and what didn’t. So maybe it’s like – like that?” 

“When the hell did you get so clever?” Jared shot Evan a look across the fire. 

“Probably – probably when I started writing poetry instead of sleeping. I was a  _ real  _ mess for a while.” Evan scribbled the word ‘nightmares’ on a piece of paper and tossed it into the fire, watching with vindictive pride as the word was consumed by fire. 

“I remember over the summer I was  _ convinced  _ you lived in another timezone because you were always posting poetry at odd hours of the morning,” Connor snorted. “Your first poem after breaking your arm came in at four in the morning and was littered with typos, I thought you must’ve been like, high or something?” 

“High up in a tree and ready to hurtle toward the earth,” Evan’s expression was something between a wince and a cheesy wink, finger guns pointing directly at Connor. 

“Jesus  _ fucking _ Christ, Ev.” Jared took a sip of his hot chocolate. “This is the most openly you’ve discussed that – literally ever.” 

“Everyone – everyone already knows?” Evan shrugged. “I can’t hide. May as well – may as well own it on the way down. But how did you know, anyway?” 

“I know you, Ev. Do you remember that year we got the exact same grades, right down to the percentages in class?” Jared quirked an eyebrow. 

“I mean,  _ yeah _ –”

“Jared, you  _ didn’t,” _ Alana gaped. 

“It isn’t like I missed much in seventh grade anyway?” Jared smirked. “But you can’t have thought that was a coincidence. We always got different questions wrong and were part of different group projects, and yet everything came back  _ exactly  _ even. On essays we’d pick different topics but get the same grade. Every risk was calculated. I’ve known you this well for  _ years.” _

“You – you also are the same one who  _ blackmailed a teacher _ into not making me do an oral presentation, so don’t you dare say that it’s just you being a calculating disaster. You probably just had dirt on all the teachers.” 

“I did – I do,” Jared shrugged. “I have it on everyone. My files? Fucking  _ immaculate.  _ Alphabetized  _ and _ color coded.” 

“And yet I’m the one everyone’s afraid of?” Connor rolled his eyes. 

“Yes,” Zoe nodded. “You’d outright ruin someone’s life to their face. Jared would slowly ruin everything over time. It’s much scarier to fight something head on then to have it slowly seep into your life.” 

“Both – both are terrifying?” Evan tossed another crumpled up paper into the fire, hiding the writing on it. “I’d rather just avoid confrontation, personally. If you can hide well enough, not even death can find you.” 

“Okay brother number three, that’s enough of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak for you,” Alana scoffed. “So, are we going to have an actual club meeting or not? I thought we’d agreed to each write a poem about our problems before tossing them into the fire, y’know, symbolically? Or at least for the coolness factor.” She toyed with the leaf behind her ear as the fire flicked sparks upward. 

“Inspiration sucks,” Connor tossed a piece of paper on the fire, writing covering both sides. Zoe couldn’t make out anything other than the names of her parents and something that could’ve been a short story about stars. 

“Mood.” Evan huffed. “I’ve been trying to write poetry for this one little section of my story for like,  _ three days  _ and none of it is working. And – and reusing old poems and rhymes feels cheap.” 

“I have no clue what the hell I’m doing, I’m making this entire train wreck up as I go? And honestly I’d just as soon keep this evening to burning blasphemous books and copious amounts of symbolic paper.” 

“The trees are screaming in anguish,” Zoe nodded sagely. 

“I am theloreax. I speak for the trees.” Evan poked at the dirt. “The trees are calling some bullshit.” 

“Speaking of Evan speaking for the trees,” Jared piped up. “What is everyone’s post-graduation plan?” 

“I’m going to go to college, probably end up in law and pursue politics.” Alana shrugged. “I’m sick and tired of people like me not having a voice. So I’m going to work within the system to convince people to listen. If the people in power aren’t listening to protests, you get them out of power. And if  _ all _ the people in power are failing you, fuck ‘em and get elected – earn that power for yourself.” 

“I’ll probably live out of the basement for a while,” Jared shrugged. “Save up for college by modifying and fixing tech for people, eventually go to and drop out of college to start a successful tech company. Probably have Alana do all the heavy lifting while I get to design cool shit.” 

“Great plan,” Alana rolled her eyes. “And if I’m busy?” 

“I’ll convince Evan to do my taxes, at least.” Jared sipped at his hot chocolate. 

“I’ll probably save up for college for a while, too. Go to community college, get a job, and write. Books about trees, books aimed at kids that get nervous and can’t – can’ talk to people. I’ll write about magic trees that whisper to them and help them conquer their anxieties.” 

“That is the most Evan Hansen thing I think I’ve ever heard,” Jared snorted. 

“I’m going to go into journalism, I think?” Connor shrugged, nudging the fire with a stick. “I like to tell stories, but I also want to write in a way that impacts the real world. So maybe that’s the answer. Maybe not. Heaven knows.” 

“Astrophysics sounds fun!” Zoe smiled. “I like the stars, I’ve got a knack for science, it’s a win-win.”

“Go ahead and just show off to all of us how much better you are, that’s fine.” Connor rolled his eyes. “Fucking  _ astrophysics.”  _

“Okay, so I think I have a poem? For the activity we all agreed on and y’all promptly ducked out of? Remember that?” Alana rolled her eyes as she shifted her piece of paper in the firelight. “So maybe if y’all could get writing –”

“Oh, I have one.” Connor scoffed. “I just hate it.” 

“Me too!” Evan cheered. “Here’s to hating our poetry!” 

“Here, here!” Hot chocolate thermoses clinked against each other as everyone but Alana agreed with the sentiment. 

“I legitimately can’t with y’all sometimes.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what’s up it’s late i’m sleep deprived and this is a mess???? i spent the better part of today looking back on my previous writing and regretting everything so yeah this book is about to get whacked with the editing stick  
> also midnight bonfires in the autumn are my entire aesthetic  
> anyway i just wanted to make clear to the people who're commenting: i read everything!! y'all make me so happy!!!! i'm just a very very very very anxious person and i get too scared to respond wHOOps so just know that i love and appreciate you even if i don't say anything because i'm nervous. and if you don't comment - guess what? i still love you!! and you still make me happy!!!! thank y'all for being so nice to me ^.^


	22. The Edge

“I’m on the edge -

it’s more beautiful than anything I ever knew. 

A sunset over a sweeping river,

a smile from a friend it feels I’ve always known,

and you, and you, and you. 

I’m on the edge -

the outside looking in. 

I’m on the outskirts, there-but-not quite,

a step away from devastation,

but not yet, not yet, not yet. 

I’m on the edge -

almost careening

taking in the view and the abyss’s call. 

It’s time to choose which edge, 

and I’m afraid, afraid,  _ afraid.  _

I’m on the edge -

I step away. 

I fall,

I reach for your hand,

I am, I was, I will be.”

Connor had been elected first to read, and as soon as he’d finished he balled up his paper and threw it into the fire. 

Jared was the first to respond, pulling his glasses off and covering his face with his hands for a moment, seeming to wipe away any expression that had surfaced before replacing it with a soft sigh, reorienting himself. “Well shit, Con.” 

Evan gave a watery smile. “You’ve always had a thing for repetition, haven’t you? You write in groups of three. Not as much recently, but you always like to repeat things like that.  _ I am, I am, I am.  _ It’s – it’s interesting.” 

“And  _ you _ write in halves. Which we  _ are  _ going to have a talk about, by the way. Because I have two theories for who those poems are addressed to. One of those theories leads to me getting a name and kicking some ass, the other leads to probably lots of tree pictures, hot chocolate, and baking.” 

Evan didn’t answer, instead looking anywhere but Connor’s face while nervously chuckling. 

“You’re not on the edge. You know that, right?” Jared glanced at Connor. “You’re not on the outside, you’re not separate, you’re not unwanted. You’re our friend, and we like you, so that part of your brain can shut the fuck up.” 

“I just – nobody has  _ wanted  _ to be my friend since second grade with the printer, I –”

“Do you remember when you were in middle school and you’d visit the library every afternoon?” Alana cut Connor off. “Someone would leave notes in the books they thought you’d read. They were called α-bet, they annotated books and gave you recommendations and reminded you that you weren’t alone. That was me, and back then...I really wanted to be friends with you. I was just...scared? I have parents who hold me to such high standards that I have always lived in fear of not being enough for people. I was so torn between wanting to be your friend and being afraid that I did both, but I also did neither. I’m sorry I failed to communicate that back then,” Alana clicked the pen in her hand as her leg bounced anxiously. 

“That was  _ you?”  _ Zoe gaped, blinking before leaning forward. “Holy shit, he’d come home and rant to me for  _ hours  _ about this mysterious person in the library who would debate philosophy with him back and forth between the pages of Ender’s Game and about the points you made, he was so sad when you stopped –”

_ “Zoe,”  _ Connor’s cheeks flushed red as he shot his sister a look. “If you’re allowed to go off about that that means I have official permission to talk about the crush you had on Jared in seventh grade –”

“– She had  _ what?”  _ Evan’s shit-eating grin was the stuff of nightmares for Jared, who had turned bright red. 

“Oh she was like, in  _ love  _ with the nice, nerdy, ‘not-creepy-the-way-most-guys-are’ boy who took a computer science class with her in eighth grade. It was the  _ worst.” _

“Y’know, Jared pretended to have a crush on  _ you  _ in our freshman year,” Evan whispered to Zoe as if he was sharing some great conspiracy. “It’s awfully lucky you two didn’t end up in an unfortunate situation, wouldn't you say?” 

“I’m sorry,  _ what?”  _ Alana was flabbergasted. 

“She was nice! If I had to end up fake dating someone, I wanted it to at least be someone who I wanted to be friends with, even if she was a year younger. Besides, it was  _ just  _ uncool enough to like a girl who was still in middle school that people believed it. Which is weird because now that we’re both in high school you’d have been considered out of my hypothetical league – not that it matters to me, because I’m aro as fuck and proud of it, but  _ weird.”  _

“Back to the original point!” Alana continued to click-click at her pen. “Connor, I’ve wanted to be friends with you for  _ literal years  _ and was too scared to say anything. I’m sure that Evan and Jared feel similarly.” 

“I didn’t want to be your friend,” Jared shrugged. “I’m not going to lie about it – I’ve done enough of that. But I’m glad I am now. Because I like you, and you were the first person I was ever able to actually  _ tell  _ about the fact that I’m ace/aro, even if I didn’t have the words for it back then. So like – no? Fuck you for thinking we don’t care? Asshole?? I’ll pull some magic bullshit so I can fight the manifestation of your insecurities if I can, because like??? Fuck that?” 

“Eloquent,” Evan deadpanned. “But seriously….you and I have had this conversation about a million times before, esspresso. I can’t say anything to you that I haven’t said before. You’re the first person who was my friend and was open to saying it. When I broke my arm, you were legitimately worried about me, even if you didn’t have to be. You and I write poetry together. You read the stories that are too personal for me to even post, and you’re honest with me about what you think because I asked you to be, and honesty means so much? You let me anxiously rant to you in the middle of the night, you laugh at my shitty tree jokes, you’re there. Even when Jared and I were weird, you were there. Even when I was a self-centered mess, you were there. When my house is empty in the middle of the night and everything feels hollow and wrong, you’re there. And I want to – I want to be there too. For you. Through everything.” 

“Gay,” Jared coughed so quickly that Evan almost didn’t hear him. Alana smacked his arm. 

“I –” Connor looked on the verge of tears. “I just –”

“It’s my turn to tell my brother I love him, so can I just – take a moment to make a couple things clear? Before we all start crying, because damn I’m already close.” Zoe took a sip of hot chocolate as if it would help hold the vines of sorrow climbing her throat at bay. “We...we really fucked things up between us. Both of us did? And our family is such a mess that I’m not sure if we’ll ever fix it. But as weird as it has always been, I’ve never stopped loving you? I missed you. For so long. Because the you that I was seeing wasn’t  _ you.  _ I didn’t like you, but I still loved you. Did that – does that make sense? I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried, even if I hate you. And if anything happened to you, it would rip me up inside forever because you’re my brother and I love you and I love spending time with you. I love stories, and stargazing, and the way that you sorta smell like old books and nail polish and the soap you buy in Dad’s least favorite brand as a quiet act of defiance. And I never stopped loving that, even if I was salty when you’d finish the milk or turn into a shouting match with Mom or threaten to kill me as you knocked on my door. That loving-and-hating-you was the hardest part, but my point is – I love you. And you’re my friend as much as you’re my brother, and our family is so broken that I think we may as well be the only people in it, and I’m sorry about the mutual isolation we put each other through for so long.” Zoe wiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands, her breaths shaking. “I just – I love you, and I’m sorry, and –” She chugged hot chocolate as if it would defend her from the oncoming tears. 

“Leave it to the  _ Subterranean Sonnetists _ to go out at night and cry around a fire for bonding.” Jared reached for the fire-poking-stick and proceeded to poke the fire. 

“Fairly on brand,” Connor agreed, swiping the remainder of his tears away. “I just...I really – I thought that – I didn’t like me for so long, so how could anybody else –?” 

Zoe stood up from where she was at the fire and walked over to Connor, wrapping him in a hug as the glow of the fire warmed the faces of everyone in the little circle. 

“You’re not alone. We love you, and we will drag you kicking and screaming from that edge if we have to. We’ll be your guard rails, so you can see the view without fear. So don’t be some kind of edgelord – we’re here. And we’ll always be here,” she mumbled into Connor’s chest. “Always and always and always.” 

“So who’s up next?” Connor asked, shaking slightly. “Al, you’re up, right?” 

Al gave a shaky sigh, standing up and unfolding her paper. 

“Passion and pain –

Love and hate –

Fear and fervor –

You and I –

You and I –

You and I.

You were meant to be a father,

but a father raises you,

and you did not raise me. 

I was raised in words, 

books teaching me more than you did. 

Words teaching me of bond and love.

You taught me frustration,

you taught me fear,

you taught me failure. 

My love could never be enough for you,

you do not want love and you cannot provide it.

You want perfection,

I do not want perfection and I cannot provide it. 

I hate my passions,

my passions bring pain, 

my pain brings work, 

my work brings improvement.

I love the journey,

the look back on a road paved with hatred. 

I love you,

who told me I would be great,

who squeezed every drop of love from me,

who sheltered me without raising me.

I hate you,

for you do not see me and you never did. 

Pain and passion –

Hate and love –

Fervor and fear –

Me and you –

Me and you –

Me and you.” 

Alana folded it up and threw it into the fire. It was long, it was drawn out, it was everything she’d wanted to say but never knew how. 

“So do we all just have dad issues or something?” Jared asked with a sharp laugh. It wasn’t a cruel sound, more the sound of someone who had sardonically been failed by the universe yet another time. 

“You have dad issues?” Zoe was so surprised she didn’t bother to mask it. 

“Of course I have dad issues. Do you think I’d be escaping my house in the middle of the night every night if I didn’t? I just don’t care. I haven’t cared about my parents or what they think in years. Heidi is more of a mom to me than my own mother ever was. That woman is a goddamn saint.” 

“Well I –”

“I mean not to be dramatic or anything but I’d die for Heidi Hansen,” Connor agreed. “I haven’t met her but I’ve been talking to Ev for a while now and she sounds like an absolute legend.” 

“Petition to all get adopted by Evan’s mom?” Zoe asked as Evan turned a blazing red. 

“Well, I – I don’t know if –”

“I’m down for that,” Connor shrugged. 

“Fuck it, why not?” Jared sipped at his hot chocolate. 

“I could use a competent adult figure in my life,” Alana nodded. 

“It’s agreed, majority rules, motion passed, we’re all going to get adopted by Heidi.” 

“Okay but legitimately, Al, if you ever need somewhere to stay my door and window are both open.” Jared smiled a little at his friend. “We could play video games together? I bet you’d love my party, Mac and Birdie are  _ great  _ but we could use a competent dealer on our team. Ev and I are good enough to make it to a legit competition, I think. And Birdie is too. But Mac...she just gets overloaded and stressed. She’s a bit young, even by our standards. She’s eighth grade, right?” Jared looked over to Evan, who nodded. 

“She’s – she’s probably too young to be playing the game, but she’s really talented. And we can’t judge – Jare and I were playing games online since like, sixth grade.” 

“I’d talk to the other players, and Ev would play the game. The ultimate team.” 

“But the point is, we – we could use a player three. If you ever – if you ever need somewhere to go, we’re both always there. And – and I’m sure everyone else feels the same way! And they can feel free to be players four and five, if – if they want!” 

“We’re kinda like a big D&D party,” Jared spoke smoothly. “We can bicker all we want amongst ourselves, we can say dumb things, we can literally get into fights with each other and never discuss it, but when it comes down to the real shit, we’re  _ there _ for each other. Unless one of you is secretly a lizardfolk. People-eating creeps.”

“Eugh. I could’ve gone the rest of my life without remembering that,” Evan made a face. 

“My dad would never allow that,” Alana was quiet. “He’d kill me for even considering it.” 

“You’re over eighteen, right? You can leave. He can’t stop you legally. If there are toxic people in your life, you can leave. If he’s ever legitimately  _ done  _ anything –” Connor shifted angrily, his nails digging into the dirt as he let his worry for his friends overtake any logic or sense. 

“He wouldn’t! He’s a jerk, he just –” Alana cut herself off. “He just says mean things every now and again, and when I don’t do well on tests he doesn’t respond well. At all. It’s just a lot of pressure, it’s my fault if I can’t live up to it.” 

“Move in with me,” Jared was dead serious. “Or Ev, if you think that’s better. He’s not good for you, Al. And you don’t have to cut him out of your life entirely, if you’re not ready. Just put distance between you, give yourself room to breathe. It doesn’t even need to be permanent. But you deserve a life lived for yourself.” 

“This weekend, I’ll move – I’ll move in with you. But you’re not gonna be weird, right? Who am I kidding, this whole thing is weird, I’ve basically been friends with you for like three weeks and I’m moving in with you – don’t you need to check in with your parents?” 

“They won’t notice. They aren’t home enough – ever since I turned sixteen and could drive, it was business trips for months at a time, then vacations, and at this point I never know where or why they are and I don’t much care. I can take care of my damn self. I’m not torn up about it,” Jared shrugged. “If they were assholes enough to leave, I’m better off with them gone. And I have all the money I need to take care of myself, and I’ve become a damn good cook.” 

“It’s – it’s true!” Evan piped up. “He makes a  _ killer  _ stir fry. And – and his homemade ramen was on  _ point  _ last time he made it.” 

“Weeb,” Connor coughed. 

“Believe it!” Jared posed. 

Alana leaned forward, her face cast in the warm light of the fire. “Okay, so tonight has lead to – all of us crying around a fire, me moving in with Jared, and the reveal of Evan and Connor as longtime friends/soulmates. Who’s ready to see what the next poem brings?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing a musical!! is one of the best things i’ve ever done the characters are so dynamic and i just fucking love my off-brand-breakfast-club lgbtqia d&d club nerds *so much* and it keeps distracting me from writing this so sorry?? i’m just having a blast and forgetting to write for this and then busting out a chapter of this in like an hour running on nothing but tea and determination so i’m probably lowering the quality too oOp so please??? forgive me?????? i swear the edits are coming. also!! next chapter has evan, jared, and zoe poems!!! i’m not skipping them!!! i just Can’t™ right now with some of the poetry, i can’t get the ~flow~ which is weird because i usually can write one of these poems in like 6-8 minutes max. i blame jared, i got halfway through the next section and then i got really sad because it’s Big Sad™ because apparently i like hurting the best character in this fic


	23. Storge

“They say I do not know love –

I say that is plainly untrue. 

You say I do not know love –

but I know I know it better than you. 

Love is more than romance, 

love is more than lust. 

So if you give me a chance 

I will tell you thus –

Love is friendship.

Love is a lie –

told so you can see your best friend one more time. 

Love is a struggle,

a doubt and a sin. 

Love is carrying on when you know you can’t win. 

I pity the fool who has been in love but never loved –

I pity the fool who does not know the difference. 

One can love and be in love,

and one can love without being in love. 

Love has no true name and no true form –

love is, love is, love is. 

You say I do not know love,

but I know it better than you –

love is, love is, love is.”

Jared finished his poem with a shaky breath, a lopsided crumpled copy of a smile on his face as he balled up his paper and threw it into the fire. 

Connor clapped his hands together and had a fire lit in his eyes. “So, who’s down to fight a bitch?” 

Jared looked like he’d caved in on himself, which was...weird to see. He was pulling apart a piece of grass as he looked at the fire. 

“My parents...didn’t take well to me being ace/aro. Which is  _ fine,  _ I mean I don’t even care. They’re jerks who are never around anyway, so why would it matter that –” he stopped as if the words had gotten caught in his throat. “– why would it matter that they think I have a hormone imbalance, or if they think I’m just gay and too scared to say it? Why would I give a damn if –?”

“They’re – they’re not your family, you know that, right?” Evan asked, his head tilted slightly as he observed the way Jared was fidgeting. “My mom and I are your family, we always have been. That’s why we were ‘family friends’ to begin with – your parents were jerks who wanted an excuse to get you out of the house. It’s why you were over all the time – because my mom didn’t like the way they were treating you, so she – she sorta made the executive decision that she’d be raising us both herself. You – you didn’t magically screw up one day and make them hate you. You weren’t some – some magically awful screw up from the day you were born. Your parents had commitment issues, even – even toward each other, and they were terrible to you because of it. They were always – _always_ – terrible parents, and definitely worse than you deserved. So fuck them? We’re your family, we think you’re pretty great no matter what, we love you.” 

“Fuck adults, honestly?” Zoe stuffed a marshmallow in her mouth, finishing it before speaking again. “Like, the big exception is Evan’s mom, she sounds pretty cool. Other than that, it seems that most adults just discount literally everything we say because we’re kids. Which is pretty shitty.” 

“Fuck parents who have kids and aren’t ready for if their kid isn’t perfectly perfect in every way?” Connor shrugged. “Just spitballing here, but if your kid doesn’t belong in a fucking family-friendly sitcom, they’re still your  _ fucking kid.”  _

“A toast – to actually being there when your kids don’t fit in to the norm!” Jared held his thermos of hot chocolate up toward the flames in a mock salute. 

“To making your own family when the one you’ve got falls short!” Alana held up her own hot chocolate from beside Jared, shooting him a wide smile. 

“To living a life without regret, because we’re all gonna die anyway!” Connor held up his hot chocolate with a sardonic grin, his face warm and sharp in the light of the fire. 

“To – to living a life with copious amounts of regret and not letting it stand in your way!” Evan cheered, the thermos almost slipping out of his hand as he raised it high. 

“To stories, and how they can connect hearts and minds through even the strangest of circumstances!” Zoe leaned back on her other arm, her head tipping back so she could look up at the stars. 

“To being stupid kids, because we may never get the chance to do shit like this when we’re older!” Jared raised his drink just a little higher. 

The eyes of everyone in the clearing met as there was a sort of unanimous unspoken decision to sip at their hot chocolate. With the exception of Alana and Zoe, the former had started a second too soon while the latter started a second too late. 

“Seriously, Jared, aphobes are full of shit. Don’t worry about ‘em,” Zoe reassured. “And if you want parents, you can take Connor and mine. They’d love to have you.” 

“Eugh, I’ll pass.” Jared wrinkled his nose. “Maybe next time Ev and I go ghost hunting, we can find a couple of demons who’ll be better parents for all of us?” 

“Speak – speak for yourself, I think my mom is doing just fine!” Evan sniffed. “But I – I  _ would  _ consider a deal with the devil in exchange for my firstborn child where I have enough money that we can comfortably live without needing to work for the rest of our lives.” 

“You’ve never wanted kids, it’s a win-win!” Jared cheered. 

“Children are little gremlins and I would just as rather never have anything to do with them,” Alana agreed. 

“Being a parent wouldn’t suck assuming that my husband would be the stay-at-home one and I could go out and kick ass in astrophysics at the same time?” Zoe shrugged. 

“Again, you’re out here showing us how much better than us you are with your gosh darn  _ astrophysics,”  _ Connor rolled his eyes. “If you’re so great, why don’t you read your poem?” 

“I think I will!” Zoe huffed as the fire crackled. 

“Then  _ do _ it!” 

“Alcor and Mizar,

you and me.

Forgotten and cover,

you and me. 

Mizar is a cover,

on the surface with less meaning. 

It hides that it is four in one, 

a mask protecting hidden depths,

it’s afraid, afraid, afraid. 

Alcor is the death star,

it lived as it dies –

even its name forgotten. 

Mizar would stay with it forever –

but Alcor changes and changes. 

Alcor and Mizar,

you and me. 

Forever in orbid, forever a million miles apart –

Alcor and Mizar,

you and me.” 

Another piece of paper was tossed into the fire. Connor was somewhere between incredulous and upset. 

“You remembered? The fuckin’ orchard –”

“Of course I remember, dumbass. It was my freshman year and your sophomore year, we snuck out to this orchard in what was probably the  _ last  _ time we spent any time together, and we looked up at the stars. You were probably high but that was okay because it was the closest I’d gotten to being with you in years, and we sat and pointed out our favorite stars and constellations. I told you about Sagitta, my favorite constellation, and you told me about your favorite binary star, Mizar and Alcor. I did some research when we got home.” Zoe smiled softly into her hot chocolate. “It’s...my favorite binary star now too.” 

“Y’all are just too  _ soft!” _ Jared cackled. 

_ “You _ have no right to judge, you literally wrote an entire poem about your platonic love for the people here tonight!” Alana poked Jared in the arm as he flushed ever so slightly. “Most of which I guarantee was aimed at your  _ basically-may-as-well-be-official _ brother, Evan.” 

“Nah, we’re family friends,” Jared waved Alana off. 

“W e’re like, family, but better –” Evan started. 

“ – because we picked each other!” Jared finished, shooting Evan a dramatized wink. 

“Y’all are insufferable,” Zoe deadpanned. 

“Y’all?” Connor repeated in somehow an  _ even more dead  _ voice. 

“I’m allowed to phrase things how I want to phrase things!”

“See but that’s the thing, you’re not? Everyone else is, but you specifically are not allowed to use whatever words you want because you can and  _ will  _ find ways to make your speech as cursed as possible. Like using y’all. Or vosotros in a Spanish class  _ not _ based around Castilian Spanish.” Connor looked unimpressed with Zoe. 

“Don’t come for my dialect like this?” Zoe narrowed her eyes at Connor, who rolled his eyes. 

Alana rolled her eyes. “It’s a good poem, dialects aside. It seems a little similar in style to the way that Connor writes, was that intentional?” 

“Most of my writing reflects his? It’s not an intentional thing, I just grew up with it, so it’s what I know. He told the best stories when we were kids, so I’ve always sort of listened.” Zoe shrugged. “When he was old enough, he was always the one who’d come into my room and tell me stories before bed. He’d tell stories typically from the villain’s point of view, talking less about the aftermath of their defeat more than the actual process of defeating them. It was always more interesting to hear about the way the people recovered and the population's reaction to the overthrow of a dictator than it was to hear about the dictator and their defeat itself, y’know? It ended up turning me into a history nerd for a while in middle school. I was obsessed with the assasination of Caesar.” 

“That’s why Julius Caesar was your favorite Shakespeare play!” Alana snapped her fingers, her face lighting up with the realization. “I remember you got so excited when you heard they were doing it as the school play in your freshman year.” 

“The funeral speech is lit,” Zoe shrugged. “I mean, ‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar.’ That’s just? Shakespeare being an absolute legend. Because he then goes on to guilt trip the entire roman people so hard that it sparks a civil war, which honestly, mood?” 

“That’s the power of words for you,” Connor leaned back, the soft, earthy smell of fall merging with the smoke that was being put off by the fire. “They can start and finish wars, move people to love and hate so strongly that they’d do just about anything. Terrifying and beautiful all at once, they’re just little squiggles on a page that can change lives. They’re pretty great.” 

“You’re pretty passionate about words, aren’t you?” Jared raised an eyebrow. “Had I not known what I do about the way you write online, I’d have been surprised.” 

“I like them well enough, but I’m pretty bad at them.” 

“Well – I mean, that’s sort of the point?” Evan turned a bit red at the questioning looks the rest of the group shot him. “I mean you can’t – you can’t be passionate about something you’re immediately great at, right? You have to suck at it just a bit, or there’s like, no point? I mean I hated writing poetry for – for a  _ while.  _ But I stuck with it, and I kept trying and I – I improved! And I’m not super great at it or anything, but I can look back on where I was and where I am now, and I’m really proud of that, even if I can look at the stuff I wrote last night and regret every word of it. And I love – I love writing because I know even if it’s awful, I’m getting better every day. It’s not my passion because I was good at it or it was just this immediate perfect fit for me. It’s my passion because I picked it, I made it my own, and I’ve worked really hard at it to a point where I think I may be alright at it, y’know? I don’t like most of my writing, but those one or two times I get things right, or – or the comments I get from readers, or the fact that I even  _ have readers  _ – that’s what makes it worth it, y’know?”

“But it wouldn’t mean shit if it came easy,” Connor finished. “It wouldn’t be a passion if you didn’t have to fight for it.” 

“That’s why burnout is so easy to come by,” Zoe agreed. “It’s hard to keep on fighting for something with everything you’ve got with all of – or even most of – your free time. It’s a good thing that people haven’t ended up in like, a quarantine or something. Because then they’d feel that awful writer’s block loop where they feel the pressing need to create but they also don’t know how to string words together so they sit and blink at an empty document for literal hours.” 

“Yes, that’d be awful.” Connor’s tone was dry. 

“But that would  _ never  _ happen,” Jared snorted. “I mean it’s not even a proper  _ zombie  _ apocalypse.” 

“Speaking of zombie apocalypses,” Connor added, “full offense but none of you are on my zombie apocalypse team. Except for you, Ev. You’ve got some scary survival skills.” 

“Jared would be – well he’d be damn good on a zombie apocalypse team. He’d never admit it, but he’s  _ really  _ good with machines, including cars. He’s had to fix his own enough times that he could probably build one if it really came down to it.” Evan pointed out. “He must have really shitty insurance or something.” 

Jared flushed red and threw a marshmallow at a cackling Evan. 

“Okay, but if you get to drag your emotional support Jared with you, I reserve the right to have my emotional support Alana.” Connor bargained. “She probably knows a metric fuckton about first aid and medicine, especially with how much time she spends volunteering at the assisted living facility down the road.” 

Jared saw the way Zoe’s face crumbled at not being mentioned. He knew that look and he did  _ not  _ like it. 

“Y’know I  _ guess  _ we need a bard, just to make sure that we don’t all go crazy from zombie bullshit. You in, Zo?” 

She  _ immediately  _ brightened. “I guess, if you really  _ want.” _

“So we are all on your zombie apocalypse team, Con,  _ full offense,”  _ Jared had that one very specific snarky head tilt that some people do when they’re looking down on someone but they’re too short to actually so it’s more they’re looking down their nose. It was the quintessential ‘I’m insecure but want you to think that I think I’m better than you’ expression. 

“If we end up the last remaining vestiges of humanity...God help us all,” Alana snorted. 

“So...are we good to have Ev read his poem?” Jared asked. “Because as much as I love not sleeping, we also  _ do  _ have school tomorrow. Which we’re probably going to be spending sleeping in the clubroom because we’re all dead inside but y’know we should probably  _ try  _ to sleep? Even a bit?” 

“That’s a fair point. You ready?” Alana asked. 

“I mean, I – I guess?” Evan bit his bottom lip, the piece of paper between his hands almost as pale as his face. 

“I live in a hollow house of broken words,

alone with dreams and love and fear and hate,

alone with my memories of you. 

How can I love you when I still feel broken?

How can I hate you when you make me feel found? 

I feel like I’m falling, I’m flying –

I’m a thousand contradictions. 

Is this love? 

I know love, and I do not love in halves –

but never have I felt something like this. 

What is this? What could it mean?

I have spent my life half-loved, 

by myself and  _ by  _ myself,

never lonely because all I knew was to be alone.

And then you were there, telling me to pick my head up,

telling me I was wrong. 

You told me to pick my head up and look around,

to see the people who were there all along. 

It wasn’t about the friends I’d made along the way,

but the friends I’d had all along. 

I love you by more than half, 

more than whole, 

more than words can say. 

I’m afraid. 

Afraid I’ll go back to my hollow house of broken words,

alone with my dreams and my fear and my hate,

alone with the person I hate most, 

without you, without you, without you.” 

“You could  _ not  _ be more obvious if you tried,” Jared snorted. “But seriously...you know we’re not gonna just up and leave you alone, right? We all like, love you and shit. We’re your friends.” 

“The bond between the Subterranean Sonnetists cannot be broken by space or time!” Zoe cheered. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re stuck with us basically forever.” 

“It’s true,” Alana shrugged. “I hate to admit it, but once you joined the Subterranean Sonnetists, you got stuck with us for life. It’s how it works.” 

“Please, for the love of all that is good in this world  _ tell me that we’re changing that name,”  _ Jared sighed. 

“We’re keeping it and we’re keeping everyone in it,” Connor’s tone left no room for argument. “Seriously, Ev. We’ve talked about this exact thing. Nobody is going anywhere. I understand how you were confused by car insurance man. I get that your mom isn’t around much, but even you see how much she loves you. But now you’ve got Alana, who sometimes can be a little clueless but she’s also really invested in being friends and she’ll try really hard at everything she does.” Alana nodded with a bit of a sheepish expression on her face. “And you have Zoe, who can be a little quick to judge and make decisions, but also happens to already be dangerously protective of everyone here, like, holy fuck? She’d sell me to the devil for like, a half crumpled piece of paper or a pen that’s run out of ink, but she’d fight the devil for y’all for free.” Zoe shrugged, shoving a marshmallow into her mouth. “And Jared...is Jared. Nobody really knows what he thinks or feels except for him, but he seems to think you’re pretty great.” 

Jared snorted at this, poking at the fire with a stick as he glanced at Connor for a moment, his gaze flicking back over to Evan. He seemed to be analyzing for a moment, something in his expression discerning as he gazed at the fire. 

“Ev, you’re really dumb. Really, unbelievably stupid.” Jared’s voice was quiet, but then it grew more boisterous. “I mean, really, you think that we’d just – leave? You think that I’d leave you on your own? Buddy, I hate to be the one to tell you, but I don’t have anywhere else to  _ go!  _ Moreover, you said yourself that  _ you’re  _ my family, that you and Heidi have always got my back, that we’re back to being actual, legitimate  _ family friends.  _ So if you said all that to make me feel better, and you actually meant it, you wouldn’t be worried about this shit, right? If you really mean that we’re family, that we’re such great friends because we’re like family but we picked each other, if you really mean that stuff – you should know well enough that I’m not going anywhere, not unless you want me to. I’m not bailing. Not on you, not now, not ever. Get it through that thick skull of yours that I’m here, and I’m not leaving.” There was something a little raw in Jared’s voice, something a little more human than he usually let show. “You’re my best friend, Ev. And you always have been. So don’t you – don’t you  _ dare  _ try to shut me out. Don’t you dare trick yourself into thinking –” Jared took a deep breath. “Next time you fall, call me, dammit. I’ll be there if you need me, you just need to tell me that you do.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so  
> that was a mess of a chapter, but it's the best i can do for now? sorry??? i'm probablyyy gonna go back and edit this eventually, make it coherent, actually write decent poetry   
> but i've been busy trying to fix the rest of this fic and...wow, that's really bad writing, sorry y'all??? i'm fixin it as quick as i can, so be prepared for major edits to come eventually. i really need to start reading through these chapters an extra time before i publish them...or like. editing them at all before i post 'em.


	24. Convergence of a Lonely Star

There was something wrong with Jared. 

He knew it, of course. Jared wasn’t stupid. He knew nightmares weren’t normal. Not the ones where he went to sleep and everyone he cared about slowly left, telling him the whispers of things he hated most about himself. He knew the nightmares where he saw the backs of his friends at the end of a hall he could never reach the end of, where he was running and running past doors that were always locked from behind which his parents’ voices echoed, where he was always reaching out but never quite there. 

They were worse than the nightmares where he was climbing a staircase with no end, his friends always just a few steps away but he was never there, the weight in his chest growing heavier with every step, suffocating and stifling until he woke up with his heart thundering and tears in his eyes. 

Yeah, that wasn’t normal. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t know what to do about it. He was just...Jared. A little broken, probably, a little bit lonely, and an ace/aro trainwreck. 

That was the worst part of those nightmares, he thought. The fact that he was terrified every time he woke up that it wasn’t  _ real,  _ that he just had commitment issues and that was why he didn’t want a relationship of any kind, why he’d never liked anyone that way. 

_ Rationally _ he knew it wasn’t true.  _ Rationally  _ he knew that his friends wouldn’t leave him behind.  _ Rationally  _ he knew that not sleeping and drinking energy drinks at every meal wasn’t sustainable, but it didn’t matter what was rational. What mattered was that Jared hated feeling alone, and that’s what he was whenever he fell asleep. Dreams are the one place that no man can follow. 

So Jared thought it would be for the best if Alana was as  _ far  _ away from his room as possible. He was probably going to clean out the basement and let her use that – even if he wasn’t a creep, it would be for the best if she knew she had her own space. Besides, her not having to hear him wake up with a small yell or – worse yet – hearing him wake up  _ crying,  _ that was for the best. And it happened often enough that it was a concern. 

He blinked softly at the ceiling of his room, the morning-blue light leaking between the blinds. Nothing else of importance had happened at their little pow-wow, so after dropping everyone off at home, he tried to sleep. He  _ really  _ did. 

But there was something bone tired and sad about him. The kind that leaks between your bones and weakens your joints and makes your mind fuzzy and dulls your senses. The air smelled grey and the world looked grey and everything felt fuzzy. 

His chest hurt. His heart hurt dully in his chest. 

Yeah, there was something wrong with Jared. 

But what else was new?

***

There was something wrong with Jared. There was something off about him as he pulled up to pick Connor and Zoe up from their house. Nobody else had been picked up yet, and Connor thought deep down that it was for the best, because Jared was not himself. 

Jared looked too okay for that. He looked too much like his middle school self. So yes, Connor was immediately suspicious. He knew a thing or two about lying and hiding, so he could recognize it in others pretty quickly. 

“So, how are you on this  _ fine  _ morning?” Connor asked as he slid into the passenger seat, Jared’s usual music having been swapped out for some musicals playlist he didn’t recognize. The notes that poured through the speaker system were melancholy anger, which was...frankly, a good sign. Melancholy anger meant that he was more than just sad, always a good start. 

“Peachy,” Jared smiled, only a little bit of sarcasm falling through his tone. “Last night was...exhausting, I just gotta let my morning coffee kick in, that’ll help me not be so much of a slug.” 

Alana popped her head out of the trunk – so apparently she  _ was  _ in the car, the specifics of why she was back there weren’t to be dwelled on – and narrowed her eyes at Jared. “What have we talked about?” She squirted the back of his head with a water bottle, as if she were training a dog or something. 

“Having better communication to foster healthier, more honest relationships.” Jared sighed. 

“So what should you  _ actually  _ have said to Connor?” 

“That there  _ is  _ something bothering me and I just don’t want to talk about it because it’s my problem and he ought to fuck off from problems that aren’t his own.” 

Zoe and Connor watched this back and forth like a tennis match, blinking in surprise when Alana smiled warmly. 

“Good. Now there are better, more productive ways to phrase that, but being more honest would be the best way to improve relationships with others.” Alana popped back into the back of the car, and Zoe peaked to see what she was doing. She had a large plastic basket full of clothes, a bag full of books, and flashcards spread across the entire back of the car. It appeared that she  _ was  _ moving into Jared’s house, and they had already grabbed her stuff. 

“So something’s bothering you?” Zoe asked. “I may have a playlist that could help. I’ve found that when I’m sad, listening to sad music just keeps me sad, y’know? So I play trashy pop that I  _ hate  _ but is incredibly upbeat, because that way I get to feel the primal rage that comes with listening to the same four chords  _ over and over _ as well as a more upbeat soundtrack to my life!” 

Jared smiled a little. “Yeah, I could go for some trashy pop. As long as it’s real,  _ genuine  _ garbage.” 

“I can do garbage,” Zoe grinned. 

They all bopped to the music that had started playing – everything from Connor and Jared mockingly singing Justin Beiber together to Alana absolutely  _ carrying  _ Defying Gravity at Zoe’s request. It was...nice. It made Jared feel warm, that there were people that cared quite so much. 

But the cold kept creeping in. The cold, and the tired, and the warmth that filled his head with an emptiness that didn’t belong. 

Connor texted Evan that they were out front, Alana and Jared harmonizing on some incredibly angry song. It was vaguely impressive to see two people rage at the abyss in such perfect tandem. He almost wanted to join in, but felt that this was really a  _ them  _ thing. 

Evan crawled into the car, holding a tray of muffins in his hands. 

“Mornin’!” Zoe was surprisingly cheery as she plucked one from Evan. “What kind of muffins?” 

“Banana chocolate chip! It’s...what I had the ingredients for.” His cheeks burned pink. “I figured we could eat these and stop for drinks on the way to school, if everyone wants? No – no pressure if you don’t want to, I just thought it may be a good idea.” 

Jared felt something in his gut soften even farther. “Those’re my favorite kind of muffin, y’know? Gimme. Please.” 

Zoe did as instructed and passed a muffin forward. 

“Do you maybe want to talk about it now?” Connor was quiet. “It’s okay if you don’t, but you need an outlet of some kind, I think. Not that I’m an expert by any means, but when I get...weird...I always do best when there’s a way to express it without, like, flipping my shit. It’s why I like poetry.” 

“Look, I just get, like, sad sometimes? And I worry about dumb shit, like if you guys are gonna leave or whatever. And I know it’s dumb, so I shouldn’t worry, and rationally I  _ know  _ it’s not true but it still, like,  _ feels  _ real or whatever. Which is dumb, and I shouldn’t feel that way, so I just...ignore it. But sometimes at night I can’t so it just...fucks with my sleep schedule. It’s not a big deal.” 

“It is a big deal if it bothers you that much. It matters if you think it matters. Does it matter?” Zoe tilted her head. 

“A little. Not much. It’s – it just is one of those things. I’ve always had weird dreams, and now they’re just, like, better tailored to my crumbling mental state. So don’t worry about it. I’m fine, it’s fine, everything is fine.” 

“No, it’s not! You’re not.” Evan narrowed his eyes. “I thought that you being more honest and accepting of who you are would fix – fix whatever’s been weird with you since sixth grade. But you’re still not, like, the person you were! So what – what is there that we can do?” 

“My parents – my parents think I’m  _ broken,  _ Ev! They think I’m – they think I’m a freak, which is  _ exactly  _ what I’ve thought since sixth grade! And yeah, they aren’t around a lot, and  _ yeah,  _ they’ve always sucked, but – that doesn’t change how it feels! Because I still remember when I was a kid and my mom would read me a bedtime story, or when my dad introduced me to video games and sat with me at six years old, teaching me the basics of what would become my lifeblood. And  _ isn’t it my fault?  _ Isn’t it my fault that things aren’t that way anymore? And if I managed to screw up a parent/child relationship, what’s to say I won’t screw this up, too? And I  _ don’t _ like to think about it and I  _ don’t _ like to say it out loud because if I admit it, it’s real. And I don’t want it – it  _ can’t  _ be real. So I pretend, the same way I always have – everything is fine! I’ve dated a ton, and I just don’t like the girls at school! I don’t care about you, it’s all for  _ car insurance!  _ I lie, and I lie, because I don’t like the way reality looks, okay? Because I don’t like the way  _ I  _ look when you fit me in with ‘reality’. So just... _ stop _ , Ev. I’m tired. I’m so damn  _ tired  _ of – of everything. I wish life had a pause button so I could just take a damn  _ minute  _ but it  _ doesn’t  _ so I just gotta keep going, right? Keep pushing forward because everyone expects you to, because everyone wants you to, because everyone  _ needs  _ you to. Well I’m tired of pushing! I’m just...I’m tired.” 

Jared was crying. It was the ugly kind of crying where his shoulders shook like there was an earthquake, his words came out slurring together and choked, and fat ugly tears rolled down his cheeks. He collapsed against his steering wheel, still sitting outside Evan’s house, feeling more vulnerable than he’d ever felt. 

Surprisingly, it was Zoe who stepped in. “Hey, how about we drop the rest of them off at school, and you and I go out and have a day together, okay? I think I know what you’re talking about. It’s a...deep, lingering tired, yeah? And Al can cover for us – say we’re in the clubroom. I’ve lived my entire life trying to not throw everything I own at a wall out of sheer frustration. I get being tired because the people around you – specifically in your family – are really draining. I know what’ll help. Or at least we can compare experiences and commiserate.” 

“Alright. But we’re getting Starbucks,” Jared wiped at his eyes, trying his best to clear his voice. “And you’re paying.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zoe's turn for a zuko field trip with jared!!


	25. kayaking and kin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief warning for a mention of an abusive relationship!! detail is *not in any way gone into* but it's mentioned

“So what’s on the agenda, Miss Murphy?” Jared asked, sipping at his convoluted coffee drink. 

“We’re doing something  _ you  _ want to do. Something you’ve never done with anyone in your family – and that includes Evan and Alana. Something that you’ve always done on your own, or always wanted to try. Anything at all,” Zoe sipped at her tea. 

“So do you have something that  _ you  _ want to do, or –”

“Enough with the people-pleasing, Jared. As one socially anxious extravert to another, let’s just relax for today, okay?” She smiled brightly. “So, something you want to do – anything at all!” 

“Kayaking...it always looked fun. Evan was always anxious that someone would slip and hit their head, but I’ve always loved being out on the water like that, and watching the world float by,” Jared gave a soft smile. “But I don’t know –” 

“Perfect!” Zoe smiled. “My mom bought a two-person kayak for Connor and me like,  _ forever  _ ago. Something about us bonding out on the water or whatever. We never used it, but we never got rid of it either. I’ll set it up so we can play music – you don’t mind musical theatre, right? I have enough playlists for a small army.” 

“That’s perfect,” Jared’s smile was small but so sincere that it made Zoe turn all gooey inside. It almost hurt to see someone get so happy over general human decency. Fuck Evan drifting way from this kid, even if this kid was sorta an asshole. And fuck herself for being a jerk to someone who just was confused about who they were supposed to be. 

“Jared, it’s important to be selfish, okay?” Zoe fixed him with her patented glare, trying to catch him dead in the eyes. “You can’t light yourself on fire just because the world is burning. Live for yourself. Don’t be that asshole that regifts something and then constantly comments on how bad they wanted it. Life is a gift you received, so like, do whatever the hell you want with it.” 

“That’s...a weird-ass metaphor.” 

“Yeah, you can thank my mom’s former life coach. To kayaking?”

“To kayaking!” 

***

“Do – do you think they’re doin’ okay?” Evan fidgeted nervously on the couch in the clubroom. Connor was curled up sideways on the floor, a book of some description on his phone as he scrolled through. Alana was drinking tea in the corner, doodling out atomic bonds for her AP Chem class. “Like, I – I don’t know if they’re getting _ along _ , and what if Zoe  _ yells _ at him again, I’ll never forgive her –”

“Evan, they’re  _ fine.”  _ Connor rolled his eyes. “Zoe – this is something she does probably legitimately have a lot more experience than we do with. She’s been dealing with my shit for  _ years.  _ She knows better than anyone the importance of putting yourself first every now and again. They’re probably gonna bond over musical theatre and come back to us best friends or whatever.” 

“Can confirm that going out with Jared for longer than two hours when he’s not being an asshole will immediately create a familial bond that is only breakable by death!” Alana added. 

“Exactly,” Connor pointed at Alana, an eyebrow quirked. “So the two of them are probably gonna come home with some kind of new outlook on life, a legendary friendship, and probably enough pranks to last us until well past Halloween. So don’t worry about them, okay?” 

***

“Hey, so, like, not to be  _ that  _ guy, but like,” Jared was quiet, “why do you hang out with the popular kids at school? They’re not like, awful, but they’re not exactly  _ nice  _ either.” 

“The truth is,” Zoe fell into rhythm with Jared’s rowing, which was in perfect timing with some song from Les Mis that was playing through her speaker. “They know a lot more about me than you guys do. They were there during the worst of Connor, and I’d go stay with them whenever I was desperate for somewhere to go. They’re a bunch of closeted weebs – the football team, the dance team, the lot of ‘em, they watch anime on Fridays together. And they’d invite me along, not because I like anime, but because I needed an escape. They even added bootlegs to their roster of stuff to watch periodically, just when they thought I needed them. They’re good people, same way you are. They just act different at school because they’re defensive, just like everyone else.” 

“But why? I don’t understand. If we could all just stop being assholes to each other about dumb shit, everyone would be so much happier.” Jared bit his bottom lip. “Which is stupid coming from me.”

“I figure that everyone is hurting, y’know? I’ve got this theory I’m working on – it’s not finished yet – but the general idea is that there’s correlation between the behavior that a person demonstrates and the behavior of the people around them. So, for instance, there’s a girl who’s got a brother who makes dumb choices, right? He’s self destructing, and taking everyone down with him. So the girl grows up seeing this, internalizing it, and without even realizing it, learning from it. So the girl gets to high school and what does she do? Trip and fall into an abusive relationship. And not tell her parents, or anybody.” 

“Zoe –”

“– so she starts to self destruct, because apparently she’s not good enough for anyone or anything, and she’s isolating herself from the only people that ever cared about her. And the guy she’s dating, he apologizes, he always says he’ll change, but he  _ never does. _ And she realizes how unhealthy this situation is, so she fights out the only way she knows how – she gets into a  _ literal fight  _ at school, except it turns into more than one, and she starts to fall apart until she gets suspended for like, three days, and comes back to school and joins the popular kids out of self defense and ignores her problems.” 

“Was that what happened in your freshman and sophomore year?” Jared was quiet. 

“Yeah,” Zoe was quiet. “I never wanted to talk about it, because like, who’d believe me this long after, right? But it’s why I don’t trust apologies, in large part. I – I worry about Connor, and I sometimes hate Connor, because it’s like looking in a funhouse mirror. It’s all the same flaws I’ve got, but warped out of proportion so it doesn’t look like me, but instead some broken version that should’ve never existed to begin with, y’know? And it’s my fault anyway. I was stupid.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Jared wrinkled his nose, “uh, same? Kinda. Look, what I mean is – I was at camp one year, and this girl asked me out. And I had no reason to say no, so I went with it. And we dated for a little while. And she wanted to take things further – and I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see any actual reason to say no other than I just didn’t want to, and I thought I was broken for not wanting to – so I just said yes. But I didn’t want to. And it sucked. I see Evan, this socially anxious mess of a dude who’d probably lie to the whole world if it made one of the people he cared about happy, and I’m like, damn, I’d do that too. But I wouldn’t even do it for someone I like, I’d lie to everyone just because I don’t want to be a freak or a failure, and I’ll even lie to myself if I have to, y’know?” 

“It’s awful,” Zoe murmured. “People say high school is a load of drama, reduce it to ‘girl drama’ and ‘kids being assholes’. But these are real, legitimate problems that people shouldn’t have to deal with until they’re like, adults or some shit.” 

“That’s the secret, I think?” Jared tapped at the water with his fingertips. “Adults don’t know any better than we do – they’re faking it just as much as we are. It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” 

“I wish we could ask for help.” Zoe was quiet, dipping her oar into the water and letting the water cut across it, the familiar pattern and resistance soothing and steadying despite the uncomfortable topic. “They don’t believe it, or they think it’s normal, or they discount it as us being dramatic. I’m a  _ person.  _ I just want to be treated like a real human being for  _ once,  _ not as a child, and not as some kind of fucking perfect princess of a  _ girl!  _ I’m more than just – I’m more than a guitar riff and a smile, y’know?” 

“If it makes you feel any better,” Jared smiled softly, “I don’t give a shit about any of that? I’m here purely for platonic rants about shitty relationships if you are.” 

“Where the hell have you been all my life?” 

“Hiding from human interaction behind a computer screen. Y’know, like a  _ normal  _ person, you socially-competent freak.” 

Zoe splashed Jared with some water from the river, which broke him down into laughter. 

The song changed, and Jared couldn’t help but smile. 

“ _ Seasons of Love _ , Zo?  _ Really _ ?” 

“I know it’s your favorite, you sap. You can’t lie to me!” 

“You’re right,” Jared grinned. The sun was warm and bright on his face, the water was cool and clear – this was a  _ perfect  _ day. “I couldn’t lie to you, even if I wanted to.” 

They floated down the river, two friends on a perfect day. 

Something warm ate at the cold in Jared’s center. He was doing okay. 

Zoe felt something had loosened in her chest that she’d never even realized was tight. She’d finally been able to put it into words. 

“To having brothers that are eerie copies of us when you look too closely but are also super duper in love with each other but in denial even though we’re totally platonic best buds?” She asked with a wrinkle of her nose. 

“To having brothers that are eerie copies of us when you look too closely but are also super duper in love with each other but in denial even though we’re totally platonic best buds!” Jared cheered, before glancing at Zoe. “Evan’s been ass over teacup for Connor since like, their third week online.” 

“Connor’s been in love with him for like, a month now? We gotta set ‘em up.” 

“Trust me,” Jared’s grin turned evil. “Alana and I are on it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y’allllllll i’ve been goin’ ham on this musical i’m writing. as it turns out, writing an original score??? something i’m *massively* underqualified for. especially since my friends all dropped out on this project...but!! the lyrics are hella fun. plus now that i can do whatever the fuck i want i made it an ace/aro musical because we need representation dammit, so that’s fun!!! hell if i know what i’m gonna do with it when it’s done tho. i’m a teenage theatre kid who’s not even involved in the local theatre because i live in bumfuck nowhere, so i’ll probably just edit it like fuck for two years until college and panic about it then.   
> but in the meantime it’s lowkey gonna consume my whole life so oop updates are probally gonna become less frequent – still gonna finish this tho! i don’t quit things halfway. usually.


	26. sunsets and shorelines

“So your plan basically amounts to...a Dungeons & Dragons game. That’s how you want to set them up? The  _ best _ you could come up with?” Zoe looked between Alana and Jared in abject horror, taking a moment to sip her milkshake in bitter disappointment. “How did I  _ ever  _ think you two were the smartest kids in our class?” 

“What we lack in common sense we more than make up for in determination!” Alana smiled at Jared, who gave a cheesy grin right back. 

“Plus, like, how  _ else _ are we going to get them to talk about it with each other?” Jared scoffed. “They’re not exactly the poster children for healthy communication, and we are  _ not  _ going to pull that rom-com locking them in a closet type shit. So we either have to wait for some wacky miscommunication hijinks, set them up on a date without having them realize,  _ or  _ try to convince them to communicate about their feelings in a fantasy-based setting where they are less anxious because it’s not about them  _ exactly  _ and it gives a layer of distance and therefore safety.” 

Alana blinked, turning to Jared slightly. “You actually put thought into this beyond just trying to get them to talk about it?” 

“Of course I did,” Jared rolled his eyes, sipping his own milkshake. “I may not get the whole ‘romance’ thing, but I want Ev to be happy, and Con’s grown on me a little bit. And if this is what it takes, I’ll do whatever I gotta to make them happy. Even if it means I’m wasting the next three weeks of my life writing a campaign that we’ll  _ probably  _ never finish because y’all are gonna get tanked by the Bagelbeast.” 

“...Bagelbeast?” Zoe looked incredibly confused. 

“Aww, you  _ do  _ care,” Alana cooed. 

“You’re wrong, I don’t care even a little bit and I resent the thought.” Jared turned a soft red as he chugged his milkshake, praying that the cool liquid would stop the burning in his ears. 

“So if that’s the plan, you’re gonna need some help.” Zoe narrowed her eyes. “We need to be  _ perfectly _ in sync here. Especially since I want them together by the winter dance so we can have some cute group pictures and they’re not cripplingly awkward the whole time about being head over heels for each other.” 

“We are  _ not  _ going to the winter dance,” Jared wrinkled his nose. 

“It could be fun?” Alana nudged Jared with her elbow. “Finally get the chance to do that color-coded musical moment you’ve been dreaming of ever since Zoe suggested it?” 

“We could all wear matching ties!” Zoe’s eyes shone as she imagined the possibilities. “Not like, identical,  _ of course,  _ but Connor could make us all ties that’re following our individual color schemes! It would be  _ so cute!”  _

“We’d be  _ those kids,”  _ Jared groaned. “I’ve always hated those kids.” 

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” Alana smiled as Jared leaned back in his seat, letting out a labored sigh. 

“Fine. But  _ only  _ if Ev and Con are together. Because otherwise they’ll be  _ insufferable _ .” 

“Deal!” Zoe reached out and shook Jared’s hand, leaning forward on her elbows. “Now, tell me what situations you’re planning to get them to talk to each other, and I’ll tell you all the ways they’re going to horrifically fuck them up.” 

***

“So...so I’ve got this place I wanna show you?” Evan fidgeted as he looked at Connor, clearly nervous about whatever this was. “But it’s – sorta a lot of walking to get there. Also, there’s like, no cell service? So when we’re out there, it’s like – well I get it if you don’t wanna go, but it’s one of my favorite places. So.” 

“Alright, where are we going?” Connor shoved his phone deep into the recesses of his pocket. 

“So it’s – well it’s at the local park? But it’s super deep in, and you gotta go off the path to find it. I found it by accident in like, eighth grade or something? It’s my favorite place in the whole world, and I’m like the only person who knows about it. Jared’s been, of course, but – not in a while. And now I want to show you. So.” 

“Awesome, let’s go!” 

The subsequent walk were...wonderful, honestly. It was like Evan was meeting Connor for the first time, because it was for once just them, and they  _ knew  _ who they were. They were theloreax and esspresso_depresso, and they knew each other better than anyone. A million inside jokes were passed between them with such fluency that to someone hearing the conversation out of context they’d have sounded insane, but they weren’t. It was just them, walking through the woods, talking as if they had always known each other. And it really felt like maybe they had, because who else could talk about things that happened in second grade as easily as they could mention the weird joke about grilled cheese that Connor had written into a chapter less than a week ago? 

It wasn’t long until they reached their destination – Connor sucked in a breath as Evan swept his arms, gesturing to the lake that was stretched out before them. It was like a mirror in the sunset. The edge of the water had a few logs from trees that had once fallen, creating small ripples in the water as it ebbed and flowed. 

The trees, speaking of, were silhouetted in the golden light. They were unbelievably tall, clawing the sky as their branches stuck out like ladders. It sucked the breath right out of Connor’s chest as Evan beamed with pride. 

“This...this is my favorite place. I love to take a journal out here and just write for  _ hours  _ because it’s just – so calming? Most people when they’re visiting the lake are way over on the other side, but I like it better here because there’s never really anybody around, and sometimes just walking along the water without shoes and enjoying the trees is  _ really nice –” _

“You’ve sent me pictures of these trees,” Connor smiled slightly, kicking off his shoes and quickly getting rid of his rainbow-colored socks so he could dip his feet in the water. It was paralyzingly cold, but it was fairly calming to just enjoy the feeling of water against his skin, fresh air in his lungs, and trees silhouetted in the light. 

“Yeah,” Evan smiled softly. “You paid that close attention?” 

“Just because I’m not a tree master like  _ you _ doesn’t mean that I wasn’t interested in your random tree facts,” Connor flicked his foot at Evan, splashing him with a bit of water. 

Evan squeaked at the cold, wrinkling his nose as he kicked off his own shoes, seeing where this was going. He dashed into the water, leaning over to flick water at Connor. 

“It’s  _ on,  _ Hansen!” Connor narrowed his eyes at Evan, who was already preparing for battle. 

It was on indeed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!! so it’s been...a couple weeks...but i’ve been busy!! sorry this is so short after two weeks of absence. but!! i solemnly swear i’m going to do better because i don’t wanna disappoint y’all???  
> also!! i know it’s not the same as it would be if i knew any of y’all irl, butttt i’ve seen a buncha people comment how they want to join a club like the subterranean sonnetists...so i made a discord server!! join if you want, we could write some bangin’ poetry, talk musicals, and generally just hang out?? idk it would be fun to meet y’all and i swear it would be vv chill. idk i made it on a whim, it’ll probably die off fairly quick  
> https://discord.gg/DMbCeCb <–– behold, a link


	27. There is a Reason

“Jared, I love you, but that is  _ never  _ going to work,” Zoe sighed. “I know you want to have faith in their ability to competently play a campaign, but this is  _ Ev _ we’re talking about. He’s going to avoid charisma checks – and talking to people – no matter what.” 

“Fair point,” Alana conceded, reaching into her bag to grab a binder that was seemingly color coded. “This is a list of all the ways Evan and Connor can fuck the plan up, alphabetized and color-coded by who is screwing things up and in what way. I was working on it today while they thought I was doing work for AP Chem. It’s every situation I could possibly think up.” 

“That’s...comprehensive?” Zoe snorted. “You really  _ are  _ ready for everything.” 

“Frankly, I just want my friends to be happy. If this is what it takes, then so be it.” 

“That’s really sweet?” Zoe blinked. “You’re so damn nice? But regardless, we need to have this plan  _ down.  _ So, have you planned for if Ev shows up fifteen minutes late due to lack of a ride to Jared’s?” 

“No,” Jared glanced at Alana. “We hadn’t thought of that.”

“Great! I’ll pick him up,” Zoe smiled deviously, leaning back. “What next?” 

***

Connor was soaked. When he and Ev were in the lake he’d slipped and fallen on his ass, which hurt like hell. It was sorta worth it when Evan smiled and laughed and his face lit up like the sun before rushing over to help Connor up, and he got retribution when he pulled Ev into the water next to him, so it was all fine at the end of the day. 

But night was starting to fall, and cold was starting to set in, and something heavy settled in Connor’s chest. 

This...wasn’t going to last. 

He wanted it to. Connor wanted to spend time with his new friends and enjoy this happy, sort-of-carefree but still screwy life forever. But he wasn’t going to  _ get  _ to. He was going to find some way to fuck it up, like always, or worse – in a year they’d graduate and just fade out of each other’s lives, wondering vaguely what happened to the kids they knew back in high school. 

Jared and Evan would stay close, they were family friends. Alana would probably still be close with Jared, seeing as they were  _ living  _ together. Zoe was probably gonna still be friends with them, too, because even now she was out with Jared and Alana. But Connor...Connor was just the weird friend that Ev had made online, he wasn’t particularly close with  _ any  _ of them. 

He wasn’t  _ special.  _ He wasn’t  _ important.  _ He didn’t fit. 

They’d  _ probably  _ be happier without him. 

He didn’t turn into his driveway, when he got to his house. He may’ve been soaking wet, but he had a bag with a change of clothes in the backseat – there was no point in going back to where he probably wasn’t wanted, and  _ certainly _ wasn’t needed. 

He kept driving. 

***

If I could apologize for a million things,

I’d apologize for only one,

I’d apologize to you. 

It’s unfair to call it for your own good,

but to me that was reason number one,

the reason I left you. 

It’s weird to tell you I love you,

but it’s true,

I do. 

I could never breach this great divide,

when there’s a chasm that spans a mile wide,

with you and me at either side –

good and bad, me and you. 

You call yourself ‘half-loved’ –

but as I run away know that I have loved you,

in more than half, more than whole,

more than words and stars in the sky. 

And when we meet again, know that I will still love you –

always and always,

always and always,

always and always. 

***

Connor had always been impulsive. Zoe  _ knew  _ that. It wasn’t something that was just going to go away. It was just part of who he was, same as his dumb jokes and his actually pretty awesome music taste. 

Zoe had always thought it was sorta neat that he was impulsive, actually. He was willing to do things spur of the moment, and even when he was afraid, he took shit from  _ nobody.  _ It was almost admirable. 

Screw that. Screw everything she’d ever thought was ‘admirable’ about his impulsive decisions. It was very late at night, Connor wasn’t home, and nobody else had seen him. 

This wasn’t the first time this had happened, to be fair. Zoe knew he’d gone off before and he’d always come home. But this felt different. He was doing  _ better _ , right? 

In the past, Connor had only ever pushed back when other people were pushing. Sometimes his reaction was uncalled for, but very rarely was Connor the first one to set off a situation. 

There was a reason. There was almost  _ always  _ a reason. 

So this was weird. It was weird and it was a step back and Zoe was afraid. 

She wasn’t going to lose her brother. Not again. Not to anyone or anything. 

She scribbled a note and grabbed her phone. 

She was gonna need Ev’s help for this. 

***

Connor was always...different. A little sad, maybe, or he just cared about different things – there was nothing wrong with it, nothing  _ bad  _ about it, it was just the way things were. 

He loved stories. He loved making up worlds and characters that would fit together in ways that the real world didn’t. The real world didn’t make sense, but stories? They always fit together, because the characters  _ had  _ to make sense. He understood characters because he had their whole worlds on display, he knew everything there was to know about them and they made  _ sense  _ even when they made terrible choices. 

That’s why he’d get lost in stories, as soon as he’d learned to read them. He’d started making them up not long after. He started with stories about the people he knew, explaining why they were the way they were or why they made certain decisions. Sometimes there was magic, sometimes there wasn’t, but there was always a  _ reason.  _

He grew up, and he realized that there wasn’t always a reason for everything in the real world. Sometimes the boy behind you kicks your chair randomly in class, or some random person in the library starts slipping notes to you, or you trip and fall into a friendship with someone wonderful online. And sometimes there’s not a reason for those things, because people are random and do stupid things and they  _ feel,  _ regardless of if those feelings make sense. 

Sometimes people are a little bit sad, even when they’re not ‘supposed’ to be. Sometimes there’s a glimmer of hopelessness, even at a high point. Sometimes even when someone’s not alone, they feel like they are. 

Connor stopped reading stories, eventually. He never really stopped loving them, but he no longer felt like the energy it took to go to the library, or even to look one up on his phone – it wasn’t worth it. Sewing was something he once loved too, the repetition and the picture that slowly took shape with embroidery – but that wasn’t worth it really, either. 

Writing was all that Connor had. Writing was all that Connor  _ was.  _ Because in his words, he made sense, and he knew that for everything he did, there was a  _ reason.  _

In his words, he was. It was the closest he ever could come to saying the things that lived in the pit of his chest. 

In his words, he was not alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i finally got my ap scores back and i passed all of them the lord has blessed this mess  
> oh also buckle up, we’re getting to the connor arc which i’ve been waiting for since like,,,forever. this is gonna be fun.


	28. esspresso_depresso

“That  _ can’t  _ be your dinner,” Alana deadpanned. 

“Why not?” Jared asked from the couch. “It’s a perfectly fine dinner!” 

“Maybe if you’re a broke college student.” Alana scoffed her eyes. “You need vegetables! At  _ least  _ you need more than salt and noodles as a meal. Like – I dunno – sauce? So you can eat spaghetti like a  _ normal  _ person?” 

“Do you have a  _ problem  _ with salt and noodles?” Jared lifted an eyebrow, his expression challenging. “It’s a perfectly  _ fine _ dinner, I’ve been doing this for  _ years _ –”

“Absolutely  _ not _ .” Alana swiped the bowl out of Jared’s hands, whirling around to the kitchen and shuffling through his cupboard. “There’s gotta be at least jarred pasta sauce, right? Jared,  _ why are there seven boxes of Lucky Charms in your pantry –” _

Jared cackled from a room over, already setting up Mario Kart. 

_ “Jared I need answers –” _

***

theloreax: Connor I don’t know wher you are but come home??? Please????

theloreax: Or at least tell us you’re okay

theloreax: Because I’m worrried, Zoe’s worried

theloreax: I know Jared and Alana would be worried if they knew

theloreax: Please I just want to kow you’re okay, I’m really worried

***

“Have you heard anything?” Zoe bit her bottom lip, glancing at Evan for a moment as she drove away from the Autumn Smiles Orchard, which was the last place they’d checked. “Anything at all?” 

“Nothing,” Evan chewed on the inside of his cheek, his heart racing in his chest. “Do – do you think he’s okay? I mean like, he’s – he’s probably okay,  _ right?  _ Unless –”

“He’s fine,” Zoe grabbed the wheel even tighter. “He has to be fine. I  _ need  _ to believe that he’s okay.” 

“But what if he’s not? Like, I – I just –”

“He’s okay. Let’s check the park next?” 

“Okay.” 

***

Connor could understand why Ev liked climbing trees so much. It was nice – calming, almost. Nothing but the sky, the cool wind, and him. 

He was high up by now. Which was great, that was his goal – he wanted a nice view of the sky, of the stars. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here, or what his goal was – he just wanted away, if only for a little bit. 

The world was too  _ loud.  _ Too loud all the damn time. It was stifling, it was infuriating, it felt like everyone was yelling so loudly all the time that nobody ever bothered to stop and listen. There were too many words and colors and everything was just  _ too much _ sometimes. 

Sometimes even his own head got too loud. It was exhausting and sometimes he used to yell just so that he could make his own voice out in the cacophony of noise, to try to make sense of the chaos. That was the way he explained it, but he couldn’t not really – because it was sort of also a bit of ‘if I’m different and broken, I want it to be on my own terms!’ 

That...wasn’t a good coping mechanism. He hurt a lot of people, more than he’d ever meant to. He’d started self destructing before he even realized who’d be caught in the blast radius. 

But there was none of that out here. There was only a very tired Connor and the open sky. He’d left everything in his car – his phone, his notebook, the whole world was just below him so he could take a moment to just  _ breathe.  _

No silent, pressing expectations. No worries of drifting away from the people he loved, no sister he could fail  _ again,  _ no parents who so desperately wanted to help but didn’t know how. 

It was just Connor and the open sky. All he could see was the sky, which opened above him forever and ever and ever. The stars twinkled in constellations that were probably long dead, but the memory of light – it was beautiful. 

Yeah, he could see why Evan loved this. 

***

“Dammit Alana, why are you so good at Rainbow Road?” 

“You lost, now you have to eat healthy home-cooked food  _ all week!  _ You made the bet and lost it, it’s not  _ my fault.”  _

_ “Dammit Alana let me eat my salty noodles –” _

***

“I see his car!” Evan pointed into the darkness, where the faintest outline could be seen. “He’s here!” 

Zoe quickly pulled into a parking spot, jumping out of the car at the same time as Evan. She glanced in Connor’s car –

“His phone is in there, it’s why he hasn’t been answering,” she noted. “I’ll go left, you go right?” 

“Okay. Text me if you find him,” Evan asked. “Please.” 

“You too,” she pulled him into a brief hug, pulling away before running down the leftmost trail. 

It wasn’t far until she heard something overhead – faint breathing, and the sound of someone shifting their weight. 

“Connor? Is that you?” Zoe called, taking after Evan for a moment and biting the inside of her cheek. 

“Zoe?” Connor jumped a bit, surprised. “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m coming up!” She called, taking it upon herself to climb up beside Connor – it was difficult, but she managed. 

“What are you doing here, Zo?” Connor glanced at his sister in faint confusion. 

“Looking for  _ you,  _ dingus. You weren’t home, and you weren’t answering any of my texts! I was worried.” 

“I just needed  _ away _ . I didn’t mean to worry anyone.” He shifted. 

“Yeah, let me just text Ev that you’re okay. We both went out looking for you,” Zoe glanced at Connor, who was sitting fairly comfortably beside her. “He really likes you, you know that, right?” 

“And I really like him,” Connor got a funny look on his face. “Maybe a little too much. I don’t – I screwed up with Mom, I  _ definitely  _ screwed up with you, and I think I screwed up with Dad enough that I can’t fix it. Not – not now, anyway. I don’t wanna screw it up with him.” 

“You’re not gonna screw it up?” Zoe rolled her eyes, shoving her phone in her pocket. “You’re like, his best friend. You could probably burn the school to the ground and he’d believe you had a good reason for doing it.” 

“That’s part of what scares me? Like suddenly there’s this person who thinks that I’m  _ not  _ screwed up, and I don’t want – I don’t want to let him down. Is that dumb? That feels dumb. I just feel – a lot right now. And it’s too much.” Connor picked at the branch he was sitting on. “I don’t think I can  _ ever _ apologize enough for what I did to you. I was – I  _ am _ – working through a lot of things. And I just – I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I hurt our family. I want to fix it, and I don’t always know how, but I’m getting help and I’m  _ trying _ . I’m trying  _ so hard. _ ” 

“I can’t say it’s okay, ‘cuz it’s not and as much as I hate to say it I can’t say that I’m totally over everything.” Zoe picked at a leaf, peeling it apart as she looked up at the stars. “But I also know you’re getting help, and that you’re genuinely trying to be better. And you’ve changed a  _ lot.  _ But you also do shit like this – like running off into the woods without thinking about the consequences – and I get scared. Scared that you’re gonna hurt someone else or yourself. So you can’t – you can’t just  _ suddenly make decisions  _ like this. Please at least – if you’re thinking of doing something like run away or whatever, I can’t say I support it but  _ talk to me  _ first, or Evan, or  _ someone.  _ And I can’t say I’ll help you, but I won’t try to stop you as long as I know you’re gonna be safe and making safe decisions. Because I don’t – I can’t lose my older brother again.” 

“You won’t. I promise,” Connor held out his pinky finger, smiling a little as Zoe looped her’s around it. He shifted a bit, putting his hoodie over Zoe’s shoulders before pointing up at the stars. “Do you see Mizar and Alcor up there? The stars are really great tonight, it’s part of why I climbed up here.” 

“Yeah, they look pretty great,” Zoe smiled softly, pulling his hoodie around herself ever so slightly. It smelled like coffee and their Mom’s laundry detergent – it was nice. It was  _ warm _ . “We should probably go drop Ev off at home, but we could come back out here after?” 

“Sounds good to me. Besides, I could use some hot chocolate to go with our stargazing – you in?” 

“Yeah,” Zoe smiled softly. “Sounds great.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> love it when the potentially dramatic chapter ends up just being soft :))


	29. Found

Alana was trying something new. Really that was all there was to it – per the request of Jared, she had to try something she’d never done before, because she’d fucked up on that last stretch of Rainbow Road and got screwed over for it. 

So Alana was trying her hand at writing a speech that she was going to post online, because that honestly...was something she’d never done before. And weirdly enough, she had something to say. Something that felt like it mattered, something that she’d witnessed and learned from and vowed never again.  _ Never  _ again would people feel lost, and isolated, and  _ broken  _ for something that was part of who they were. 

Jared had thought he was broken. Connor had problems left untreated for years. Zoe’s problems were invalidated because her brother needed help more. Evan’s anxiety had left him isolated for years, and it had left a rift in his friendship with Jared that would never be fully healed, but had been bridged. 

_ No more.  _ She was going to stand up and do something, or try to, anyway. 

So she was going to write. She was going to tell a story. A story about a group of people who felt alone, and broken, but  _ found  _ each other. They reached out to each other, using words to heal and connect and create something that was impossible alone. 

Alana put her head down, and she wrote. 

She wove words together about two people meeting online – by chance, a stroke of luck, one in a million – one in a  _ billion _ – something impossible and beautiful and strange. They used words and connected with one another, and they were not alone. 

She wrote about an overachiever who found a crumpled poem on the floor at school, and how it gave her an idea. How that spark of an idea had brought the three of them together, and how it had even ensnared a starry-eyed musician and a stereotypical class clown. 

She wrote about how they were hurting. How a boy had broken his arm in the woods and nobody came, how for  _ years  _ a boy was left to drown in his own thoughts, how the overachiever had been pushed to her breaking point by expectations, how the starry-eyed dreamer had her ideals manipulated and bruised, how the class-clown was convinced he was broken and unloved. 

She wrote about how they were healing. How broken-armed boy had stood up for his friend, how he had used words to reach out to his new friends and they had reached back, how the boy who was drowning in his own thoughts had been the first to notice someone else drowning in theirs, how the overachiever was moving past grades and extracurriculars and now had set out to follow her own passions and stories, how the starry-eyed dreamer had learned to balance ideals and cynicism, how the class clown was learning that he wasn’t broken, he was loved, and he would never be alone. 

The conclusion...that was the easiest part to write. 

_ The truth is, there’s no real villain in this story. There’s no big bad that can be fought, no singular trial or obstacle that can be overcome. The true villain is doubt. Doubt that poisons the mind and convinces people that they are unworthy, that the work is futile, that they are alone.  _

_ But none of this is true. Not really. The anxiety will never leave, but every inch is worth fighting for, because there are hundreds of people beside you who’re fighting for the extra mile. And the doubt will never fade – that’s not how humanity works. But you learn how to deal with it, and persist anyway. That’s why, even when things get wild and crazy and out of control, I think that it’s important we keep moving. Because knowing that everything is going to suck and going ahead and doing it just because you can? And knowing that it’s all going to fall apart, but trying anyway? That’s the most human thing I can think of. And humanity is pretty damn great, even if we screw things up a lot.  _

_ Let’s reach out to each other. Because no matter how we feel, we’re not alone, and maybe we never were.  _

_ And maybe none of us are as different as we thought.  _

This... _ this _ was the core of the Subterranean Sonnetists. Alana hadn’t even really meant for it to happen when she set out to start this club, but it had changed over time. It hadn’t even been that long since they’d started having meetings – maybe a little over two months – but they were growing together. 

Maybe other people could learn and grow from it, too. 

She’d ask the others if they’d let her record and post it at tomorrow’s lunch meeting. It was, after all, their story as much as her own – they had the right to their privacy, if they wanted it. 

But as Alana sat in front of a glowing computer screen in the darkness, her resolve strengthened. They could  _ do  _ something with this. Poetry was something that changed everyone in the Subterranean Sonnetists, even if they weren’t poets, and that was because they were finally putting things into  _ words.  _ Words that were being shared with other people, that were forcing  _ communication.  _

So maybe other people needed to put it into words, too. What they were thinking, what they were feeling, and they needed to see other people do it. To see that they weren’t alone in what they were feeling. 

But maybe poetry wasn’t for everyone. Maybe the Subterranean Sonnetists should be about more than poetry – it should be about all art. About writing, about drawing, about dance, about whatever it is that helps people communicate that  _ thing  _ that lives between everyone’s ribs that burns like a fire for what they love and freezes in place for that which they hate. 

Maybe the Subterranean Sonnetists could start talking about sharing this stuff online, creating a place where people will feel heard and and will know that they are not alone. Because they'd helped each other feel found, and maybe they could help someone else. 

_ Maybe.  _

***

“You’ve  _ got  _ to be kidding me,” Zoe deadpanned at Connor. “You can’t  _ honestly  _ think that  _ Orion  _ is the best constellation? That’s so  _ basic.  _ You are a  _ basic  _ star bitch and I think I need to disown you.” 

“Really?” Connor quirked an eyebrow, sipping his hot chocolate like he was a Karen with a pumpkin-spice latte. “What’s  _ your  _ favorite, then?” 

“Sagitta.  _ Obviously,”  _ Zoe rolled her eyes. “I mean, the idea of an arrow of starlight in the night sky, guiding our way? I really,  _ really  _ like that. It makes me hopeful that maybe there’s something out there looking out for us, even if most of the time it’s really busy and does a sorta shoddy job. Like, I dunno, it’s kinda goofy, but – if there’s really something out there pointing us in the right direction, or something that’s pointing in the  _ wrong  _ direction but is just trying it’s best – it’s nice to have something to believe in. When you’re cold and lonely and looking out your window wanting nothing more than a friend, the idea of an arrow of light in the night sky just sounds...really neat.” 

“Damn,” Connor bit his bottom lip, trying really hard to stay warm despite the fact that Zoe had stolen his hoodie less than fifteen minutes after they climbed onto their roof. “Meanwhile I just liked Orion because of his funky belt.” 

“Yeah, his belt  _ is  _ pretty cool,” Zoe snorted. “I mean, did you know that it’s also called the Three Kings? Well, it’s  _ also  _ also called the Three Sisters, which I think is even cooler because like, y’know,  _ star siblings.  _ But anyway there’s a couple of stories about them, I think? I remember they’re also, like, symbolic of two people who can never meet in some kind of Chinese story or something. And that’s like, super sad? But I don’t remember any other details about it.” 

“Are you just a star encyclopedia or something?” 

“I’m allowed to have hobbies!”  __

He ruffled Zoe’s hair, not even really all that annoyed with her for stealing his hoodie at this point. She looked really comfortable sitting up here on the roof, hot chocolate in hands, looking up at the stars and rambling in that way that she always used to when they were kids. 

...It was nice. Something warm bubbled in his chest, something soft that hadn’t been there in a long while. 

They were  _ okay.  _

***

**kazooie:** okayyyy so alana is trying to help me ‘get a healthier lifestyle’ or whatever

**kazooie:** long story short, i have,,,a lot of baking ingredients in my house and i can’t use them anymore

**kazooie:** note there that *i* can’t use them anymore, but you are still *entirely* allowed to use them

**kazooie:** ...come over tomorrow after school for a cookie baking party?? i have a playlist of all our favorite musical bops and i can evict al for the afternoon, it would be funnnn

**banjo:** I!! Would love to!!!! Plus we can talk about that D&D session we were thinking about doing??? Would we invite the rest of the SS to D&D or would it be like the old days???

**kazooie:** hell yeah we invite the other poetry nerds!! and remember that *i* get to dm this time!! 

**banjo:** We’re gonna totally bop to Take Me or Leave Me, right?? We haven’t Properly™ bopped since like, sixth grade. And Revenge Party!!! We gotta bop to Revenge Party!!!!!

**kazooie:** you dare to think i’d leave off the *traditional* song of take me or leave me??? i’m a heathen but i’m not uncultured. 

**kazooie:** speaking of sixth grade,,,i never deleted our old minecraft world??? so if you want we could take a trip down memory lane,,,through the old world of Chili-Chocolate Castle? 

**banjo:** You kept that hellscape?? This I gotta see

**kazooie:** epic, very cash money, see you tomorrow at school because i’m being forced to sleep by alana k bye

**banjo:** Goodnight!! Try to sleep well!!! 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alana!! is doing a thing!!! gee i wonder if that'll be important later >.>


	30. The Subterranean Sonnetists (Part One)

“Absolutely not,” Jared scoffed. “Like, great idea, but that speech needs a lot of work.” 

“Agreed,” Connor nodded. “Al, I think that extending the Subterranean Sonnetists to an online initiative that promotes the sharing of art to help people feel less alone and promote communication is a  _ great  _ idea, but this speech is bullshit.” 

“Do you honestly think we’re gonna have you tell this story on your own?” Zoe ate her chips and emulated every bit of their salt. “We’re telling this one  _ together.  _ ‘Cuz it’s like, all of ours. That’s what we’re thinking, right?” 

“That’s what I was thinking,” Evan nibbled at a cookie. “So, like, we should write it together, right? Although I really like what you have!” 

“Yeah, that,” Connor agreed. “Like, great speech, but like hell we’re gonna have you tell it alone.” 

“This is part of the whole ‘don’t push yourself farther than you need to, take care of yourself’ thing? Like, remember that there are  _ other people you can lean on.  _ You’re right, we found each other, and that means that you aren’t alone,” Jared wrinkled his nose, swiping a cookie from Evan before returning to his perch on the arm of the couch. “So let’s rewrite that thing again.  _ Together.  _ And tell our bullshit story together too, because if you don’t have multiple accounts nobody is going to believe the funky logic-defying hoops that this group has jumped through to acquire proper communication.” 

“Like the fact that we all use poetry to talk about our crippling emotional issues?” Connor snorted. “Like,  _ the weirdest  _ thing to come out of this is actually talking to someone about... _ everything.  _ Because I don’t  _ do _ that.” 

“Mood,” Jared snorted. “I mean I ended up with Alana  _ moving in with me _ because of this club. Which is  _ so weird.  _ This shit is important.” 

“So where do we start?” Evan was quiet. “If...if we do this, we really need to do it  _ right.”  _

“The beginning seems as good a place as any,” Zoe shrugged. “That means you and Connor. And all your online stuff?” 

“Okay,” Alana pulled out her laptop. “You two are the experts on your friendship, tell me what you want to say.” 

“It started on a whim, really. It wasn’t like I just  _ decided  _ one day that I wanted to write poetry online, and worked toward it. I literally wrote a short story and said ‘fuck it, why not?’ Ev and I started reading each other’s stories, started talking. Before we even realized it, we were friends.” 

“Even though it was just online, we did all kinds of stuff together. There was a level of anonymity, it was safe to go on rants and rambles about the things we were frustrated with or afraid of because we knew it wouldn’t be traced back to us. We speedran our way through the awkward bits of our friendship so we could analyze each other’s writing, and it changed us. I was happier, and I felt a lot less alone, ‘cuz I guess I wasn’t. And then school started, and we managed to find each other again,” Evan snorted at Connor’s expression as he took another bite of his cookie. 

“I made an awful first – second, I guess(?) – impression. I like, stole one of your poems and crumpled it up and threw it on the ground because I thought you were screwing with me.” 

“I found that poem, and upon reading it I made the call we should have a poetry club. I found a room nobody would miss and I tried to convince all the lonely-seeming people to join it. I started with Connor when I went out a walk to clear my head one night, but he suggested Evan. I also invited Zoe, because I thought that having a bunch of different kinds of people would be good for the group. I was right, by the way,” Alana smiled smugly. 

“I came because Ev was nervous under the guise of being bribed with cookies,” Jared swiped one of Evan’s cookies for emphasis. “Not that I wouldn’t die for these cookies, but I probably would’ve gone either way.” 

“And then we got there,” Connor continued. “And it was  _ weird.  _ Because we were in this secret room under the stage, and it felt sort of like this was a place with as much anonymity as we got to have online, except here it was more of an unspoken thing where we wouldn’t spill each other’s deepest and darkest secrets  _ please and thank you. _ And that first meeting was weird because at that point Alana was so brutally honest that it legitimately like, made Ev cry. But there was something here, so we joined anyway.” 

“It was sort of a ‘screw it I have nothing to lose anyway’ kind of moment,” Jared shrugged. “I didn’t think it was gonna like, be anything life altering. And Ev joined, so I figured I could probably stick around him a little more if I joined. And at that point, we were just rolling with it.”

“We speedran the weird awkward phase again,” Evan smiled a little. “We still  _ had  _ it, but it was over quicker than usual. Midnight ice cream helped, but midnight ice cream helps  _ everything.  _ And then suddenly there were these people who knew as much about me as I did, but with a different perspective than I'd ever had. And it was weird, but good, I think.” 

“We’re going about this wrong,” Zoe murmured, chewing on her bottom lip. “If we talk about what this did for us, how we found each other, it’ll appeal to people, sure, but they won’t be able to  _ connect  _ with it. What we need to do is tell a story –”

“– and weave our own through it!” Evan realized as Zoe spoke. “You’re a genius! That’s – well, it’ll be the best way to reach people, right?” 

“So we need to tell a story that’ll connect to people while still conveying our message,” Alana sighed, taking a moment to collect herself. “Honestly that’s gonna be the  _ easiest _ thing we’ve done since we started this mess of a club.” 

“It needs to be a more intimate story than like, some bigger overarching story that sounds fresh out of a history book,” Jared agreed. “Maybe a specific instance where we’ve been directly impacted by having this club and each other?” 

“Maybe each of us tells our own little story?” Connor suggested. “A personal anecdote. And we tie them all together with a preface or a little bit at the end?” 

“Let’s all try to have our stories written by tomorrow, yeah? We can go home and work on ‘em tonight,” Alana suggested. “Then we can exchange and edit them tomorrow, and film the day after that.” 

“Sounds good!” Zoe smiled as the bell rang, the Subterranean Sonnetists splitting and walking to their next classes. 

***

_ I didn’t know there was a word for it. I’m a born and bred child of the internet, but I’d never really heard the words before.  _

_ I knew there was something up in sixth grade. I didn’t like girls and I didn’t like guys but everyone was supposed to like one, or the other, or both, but I just  _ didn’t.  _ And I thought I must’ve been some kind of freak for not having ever fallen in love, for never even having had a crush before. It felt like the whole world was in on this cosmic joke that I just...wasn’t. Maybe  _ nobody  _ actually liked this stuff and all that romance and crap was just wishful thinking.  _

_ Regardless, I felt very...wrong. I didn’t get something that every other person I knew was so invested in – something so important that it’s an entire genre of books and movies with enough subgenres and tropes to fill a warehouse.  _

_ It was isolating. I was hurting so badly that I hurt some of the most important people in my life, because I was so desperate to reject the reality that I rejected all of it, even the good parts. I was so deep in self-loathing and self-doubt that I didn’t really know if there was a way out. It was like I was stuck underwater and I was holding my breath, trying so hard to fight to the surface that I was losing the last of my oxygen or something.  _

_ I said something awful about Ev one day. It sorta slipped out while I was being defensive, and I told a secret I never meant to – that I had no right to know. Everyone got mad at me for it, and afterward I was forced to face the reality – forced to accept that like it or not this was the way things were, the way  _ I  _ was, and I couldn’t change it or hide from it, even if it sucked and it hurt. I admitted to not liking guys or girls, and you know what happened? _

_ Alana told me that there were  _ words  _ for it. Asexuality and aromanticism have been part of my life for as long as I’ve had my life, but I never knew that there was a whole community and a whole spectrum of people like me.  _

_ And I realized: maybe I am broken. Maybe there  _ is  _ something horribly wrong with me, something about me that’s different from everyone in the whole world, and maybe I’ll find myself alone when I’m older because all my friends will have paired off with someone else who will matter more to them than I do.  _

_ But I won’t make myself miserable over a maybe. I won’t force myself to be miserable as someone I’m not, because that’ll disappoint more people than I would if I were unapologetically myself.  _

_ And I...don’t think I’ll end up alone. Because I love my friends, and I think my friends love me – no romo, of course. And maybe they’ll fall in love and get married, but I think they’ll always love me, and I think they’ll always be there if I need them. Because we’re family – somehow, impossibly. And I think that’s all I ever really wanted.  _

***

Jared...didn’t hate it. He didn’t love what he’d written, either, but for something thrown together during a class that he was half paying attention to, it made his point – albeit in a mushy, weird way. 

He was  _ not  _ looking forward to giving this speech-y thing, for all that he said it mattered. Because while it definitely did, and he wanted to do this, he also had a feeling that Ev was gonna cry. And if Ev started crying, it was gonna make  _ Jared _ start crying, and honestly he wasn’t sure who else in the Subterranean Sonnetists was a sympathetic crier but he  _ suspected _ Connor was one, deep down. 

He folded it up and shoved it in his pocket, his grin widening into something genuine as Evan fell into step beside him. 

“You ready for some absolutely  _ legendary  _ baking?” He bumped his friend with his shoulder, watching a smile creep onto Evan’s face. 

“Of course,” Evan scoffed.  _ “I’m  _ not the one who was eating  _ salty noodles  _ last night,” Jared paled as Evan narrowed his eyes at him. “Yeah, Alana told me about that. How many times have I told you to take care of yourself? We – we both know you can cook  _ really well  _ so do us all a favor and  _ do it.” _

“Sometimes I’m just not motivated and wanna go home, flop on my couch, and eat some easy to make food. I’m tired,” Jared groaned. “At least I’m eating at all, it’s better than  _ you  _ used to do, Mr. ‘Oops I forgot!’” Evan flushed as Jared continued, “Yeah, remember when you’d get too into a book or video game and I’d have to text you to remind you to eat lunch and dinner and to  _ go to damn sleep it’s three in the morning?  _ At least I'm not pulling that.” 

“You totally would be if Al weren’t living with you,” Evan defended. “You’ve always had a worse sleep schedule than I do, don’t think I haven’t noticed you playing ranked matches at two in the morning on school nights since, like, freshman year. Don’t think I won’t start changing your password at night if you don’t start getting back on a normal – or at least somewhat regular – sleep schedule!” 

“You wouldn’t,” Jared gasped dramatically as he held the door of the school open for Evan in a wide bow. 

“Bitch I might! I worry about you – and heaven knows I don’t have it in me to be anxious about both of us at the same time, if I keep goin’ like this I’ll spontaneously combust. Do you  _ want  _ me to spontaneously combust, Jared?” 

“May be a festive party trick next fourth of July –”

_ “Jared.” _

“Okay! Okay, I’ll  _ try.  _ But I make no promises.” 

“As long as you try,” Evan narrowed his eyes. “I’ve got my eye on you.” 

“Yeah,” Jared smiled softly, quickly hiding it behind a scoff. “I’m sure you do.” 

They drove back to Jared’s house, quickly settling into a familiar rhythm in the kitchen – Evan took charge, telling Jared exactly what to grab and remembering where everything was. From a speaker in the corner played songs from a wide assortment of musicals, an emphasis being placed on both Waitress and Hadestown. 

“Waitress I can understand,” Evan winced as Jared tripped over a stool at the island, “But why  _ Hadestown?  _ It’s great, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t have the history that Rent does, and it’s not particularly thematically relevant.” 

“Fair point. Counterpoint: Wait for Me is incredibly fun to go off to and I’ve been waiting for an excuse to listen to Hadestown with a friend, and now that I have one I will be using it until it dies,” Jared passed Evan the next ingredient before Evan could even bother to ask. He couldn’t bake for the life of him, but he knew the recipes by heart – he’d been Ev’s assistant in the kitchen since they were little, after all. 

“Valid counterpoint, counter-counterpoint – as great as Wait for Me is, Chant is even better.” 

“Absolutely a valid opinion, but counter-counter-counterpoint – Any Way the Wind Blows and Promises will emotionally wreck me every time .” 

“Incredibly valid, understandable, have a nice day,” Evan could barely finish his statement before both boys devolved into snickers, Evan smacking Jared’s hand away as he inched toward the newly made dough. 

The opening notes of another song started to play, and both boys stopped dead. 

This was  _ it.  _ The song of the afternoon. 

“Dibs on Maureen –”

“– Ev, you can pry Maureen out of my  _ cold dead hands –” _

“– then perish!” 

This had left Jared so gobsmacked that Ev had, in fact, been able to pry Maureen out of his cold dead hands. 

Somehow, way back in sixth grade,  _ Take Me or Leave Me  _ from Rent had become their favorite song to sing together. They always were at war over who got to sing which part, but it was just one of those inexplicable  _ things  _ with their friendship. 

It was...nice. It left Evan feeling warm. For more reasons than just the oven that had recently been opened for the sake of cookie baking. 

He never could’ve had this a couple of months ago. 

***

_ I am...a very nervous person, put bluntly. I trip over my words, I find them caught in my throat and I stumble through them way too fast sometimes because I want to just get through it without being a huge embarrassment to myself and everyone around me.  _

_ It’s easier online because of this, I guess. Nobody can hear what I’m saying, so I can speak clearly without the judgement of what I am and am not capable of saying without tripping over my words, and I can plan ahead what I’m going to say pretty well. I still get too nervous to say anything most of the time, even when I really,  _ really  _ want to, but I manage.  _

_ I guess that’s why it was easy with Connor. We started talking online, and I was nervous – but less than with most people. And most of the nervousness started coming after instead of before and during, which was different, too.  _

_ Before I knew he was Connor, we shared poetry and stories and he knew more about me than anyone except for Jared.  _

_ Opening up to him was what gave me the courage to join the Subterranean Sonnetists when Alana asked – well, that and the split-second panic that I’d be disappointing someone if I said no. But mostly the first thing!  _

_ The Subterranean Sonnetists helped me mend fences with Jared, because it helped me talk to him and realize how selfish our friendship had been before. I hadn’t been fair to him, and he hadn’t been fair to me, but we were moving forward. It helped me become the kind of person who was strong enough to stand up for him when he needed me, because I’d grown and I knew that it was more important that he knew that someone was gonna be there no matter what than it was for me to worry about if someone was gonna hate me or not. It made me realize I’d rather have everybody in the whole world hate me than to lose the people who are close to me now, which is wild because I hadn’t known any of them all that long ago.  _

_ The words still stumble and get caught in my throat. I don’t always know what to say, or how to say it, and sometimes I get so caught up in my own head that I fall back into being selfish all over again. But now I know that there’s stuff worth fighting for, that there are people out there who I care about, who would be there if I needed them and who I’d be there for, always. Maybe when you fall in the forest it’s nice when people find you, but they it’s rare that they will unless you call. And it’s...nice, to know that there are people I can call.  _

***

_ The Subterranean Sonnetists gave me my brother back.  _

_ It forced us to look at who we were, who we are, and who we will be – who we  _ want  _ to be. He realized he didn’t like who he was, he’s trying to change who he is, and he knows who he wants to be. I realized that I don’t need to forgive who he was, but I can love who he is, and I can believe in who he can be.  _

_ We’re talking again. We can make it through a family dinner without someone exploding or getting accused of, like, arson or whatever.  _

_ I’m not a poet or a wordsmith or whatever. I like music, and I love the stars. Weirdly, the Subterranean Sonnetists has an absurd affinity for both – we go out stargazing and we listen to musicals as a group and it’s just this really great weird place where we’re ourselves, unabashedly and wholly, relishing in who we are while talking about who we will be and reflecting on who we were. And it’s safe because we’re all so unabashedly uncool that it loops right back around to being the best thing ever.  _

_ It’s like this wild place where you can be alone with a group of chaotic dumbasses – like, we’re all alone, but we’re alone  _ together,  _ and then suddenly we realized that we aren’t alone at all, and maybe we hadn’t been in a little while.  _

***

“Hey, Zo, I’m heading out to snag a comic from the bookstore by the school, do you want anything while I’m out?” 

“No thanks! Love you, be safe!” 

“...Love you too.” 

***

_ “I am, I am, I am.”  _

_ It’s a repeated motif in my poetry, or at least variations of it are – it’s important to me, though nobody but me really knows why.  _

_ I was always different growing up. Something was wrong with me, I figured, or at least I’d screwed something up enough along the way that I didn’t really fit anywhere. I didn’t like guys or girls but I also  _ kinda  _ liked guys, but only after I’d known them for a while, and that was...kinda weird.  _ I _ was kinda weird.  _

_ My family didn’t really get me, which wasn’t their fault, I was just...different. Or maybe it was that I never really tried to communicate with them about what was going on in my head. Either way, I felt like I was weird, like I was broken, like there was something off about me that nobody could quite place – that even I wasn’t sure about.  _

_ I remember in eighth grade looking at myself in the mirror and vowing to be strong enough to endure. I would get through, I wouldn’t give up, I wouldn’t quit.  _

_ “I am, I am, I am.”  _

_ I was angry. I was hurting. I was a lot of things, and none of them good. I was self destructing and I was determined to take everyone who had ever loved me out right alongside myself, intentionally or not. I really hurt my sister, I really hurt my Dad, I really hurt my Mom – I really hurt myself.  _

_ I hid in my words. As long as my words existed, there too was a piece of me. Writing was all that I had left as I fell into a downward spiral – writing made sense, I could fit words and characters and emotions together to tell a story, even as my own life spiraled out of control.  _

_ I was so full of hate for myself that I confused it with hatred for others. I hurt a lot of people. I was cruel, I got into fights, and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for a lot of the things I did back then. I assumed the worst of people, and I think I was wrong a lot of the time.  _

_ “I am, I am, I am.”  _

_ I use the present tense there for a reason. It’s – in my writing, I think that it captures who you are in a moment in time. These words are who I am  _ now,  _ in this moment of this day, in this week, in this month, in this year. I am suspended in time in these words, as I am, but sort of also as I was. In the instant they are written they are history and right alongside them is the iteration of me that was speaking them and writing them. So to say that “I am” in that sense is to say that the version of you captured in those words is that person, and therefore you get the chance to be someone new. Does that make sense? Probably not. But to have someone else say “I am”, to have a past version of yourself say “I am” simultaneously holds you accountable while allowing you to become someone new.  _

_ “I am, I am, I am.”  _

_ I am not the person I was yesterday. I am not the person I will be tomorrow. I am never finished in growing and changing and learning.  _

_ I am not alone. I am not perfect. I am trying to be someone new, someone better, someone worthy of love.  _

_ My words aren’t a place for me to hide anymore. My words are now a place for me to grow, and change, and be someone  _ better. 

_ “I am, I am, I am.”  _


	31. The Subterranean Sonnetists (Part Two)

_ I grew up exceptional.  _

_ That was the expectation without exception – anything less and I was a disappointment, a failure. And I couldn’t stand to be a failure, not when I felt there was more I could be doing, I could always be doing  _ more. 

_ I started the Subterranean Sonnetists because I was tired. I was tired of expectations and rules and limitations, and I made the choice that I was going to start somewhere free of that.  _

_ I hadn’t realized yet that I was still forcing myself to live up to expectations and rules that had been made when I was years younger, that I was still acting as someone I was not.  _

_ I’ve grown since then, I think – I hope. I moved out of my father’s house, because for all that I love him and he loves me, we aren’t good influences on each other’s lives. I moved in with Jared, who was the first one to see that I was really struggling.  _

_ I’m not ‘better’ yet, because you can’t just – can’t just unpack years of emotional manipulation in a couple of weeks.  _

_ But I know that I have friends. I have – I have the Subterranean Sonnetists, who I may’ve had the idea for but now far exceed anything I could’ve created – and they’re my family. For them, I’m enough, and I always was.  _

_ And that’s all I ever wanted, really.  _

_ I’m enough, and they’re enough for me, and...it works.  _

_ And everyone deserves something like this – a place where they can meet people who make them feel like they’re enough. A place that feels more like home than their house used to, a place where they can be whoever the hell they are without being afraid.  _

_ That’s why I believe in this.  _

***

“Do – do you think it’s good enough?” Evan fidgeted as Alana checked the video over, her little ending about doubt poisoning the mind playing. 

“Relax, Ev. It’ll be fine,” Jared glanced up from his own laptop, where he was starting to build a social media presence for the Subterranean Sonnetists. 

“This...if it can make just one person happier, it’s worth it, right?” Zoe smiled nervously, nibbling on one of the cookies that Jared and Evan had brought. 

“Yeah,” Connor was quiet, reserved, but not afraid in the same way that Evan was.

“It’s done,” Alana piped up from across the room. “Are we ready?” 

_ I am, I am, I am. _

Connor glanced at his friends before locking eyes with Alana. “Let’s do this.” 

***

This is not one story,

not two or three,

greater than the sum of its parts,

greater than we are,

and we are, we are, we are. 

This is not our story,

although it started as ours,

because we pass it to you now –

come as you are, 

because you are, you are, you are. 

We can grow and we can change

we can see the world as it could be. 

As our story becomes yours –

and your story becomes ours –

two parallel tales, like Mizar and Alcor –

know that you are not alone,

you are not half-loved, 

because love is, love is, love is. 

And they do not know us

but they will. 

In my words I am eternal – 

I am, I am, I am. 

In our words we’ll live forever –

we are, we are, we are. 

***

“Holy shit,” Jared breathed late that night, watching the numbers change. “Ev is gonna lose it – Al! Al, you gotta  _ see this –” _

“You’re seeing the same numbers I am, right?” She was breathless as she appeared in the doorway of his room, clearly having sprinted from across the house. “This is really happening, right?” 

“This is nuts. Nuts! We said we wanted to help one person, but –”

“– definitely way more than one person, I know,” Alana grinned. “We’re doing something, Jare. I don’t know what, but this –”

Jared grinned, “– this is  _ definitely  _ something.” 

***

It crept up on Zoe the most out of everyone. It wasn’t that surprising, frankly – she was the most active on mainstream social media out of everyone in the Subterranean Sonnetists. Jared was more of a Tumblr and Reddit kid, and all of his was mostly anonymous – he was hard to trace. Ev was too anxious for a public account, Connor always thought it was some kind of bullshit, and Alana just wasn’t the type for it. 

But Zoe was active online, and she thought it was...weird, when she got a sudden spike in followers after school. Nothing totally outlandish, but  _ weird  _ nonetheless. 

Then she started seeing posts. People talking about projects too close to their hearts to share, people repeating the phrase “I am, I am, I am”, people talking about their video and mentioning  _ her.  _

It wasn’t something fast, or immediate. It was a slow, creeping kind of thing – one person saw it, showed it to another, showed it to another. She opened the video in another tab, and watched the numbers climb – this wasn’t what she’d expected, what any of them had expected. 

They’d thought it would be small – something meaningful, but small. 

But hundreds of people were seeing this. This thing that they’d done on a whim, this story that was once theirs but now belonged to more people - it had grown more than they’d anticipated. 

_ “Oh my god, everybody needs to see this!”  _

_ “We are, we are, we are.”  _

_ “Share it with the people you love!”  _

_ “Thank you for giving us a space to tell our stories –” _

_ “– to be together –” _

_ “– to find each other –” _

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Connor! Connor, you gotta see this – and call Evan! He needs to know before school tomorrow.” 

Her phone buzzed again – she checked it quickly, only to see a notification from Jared. 

**theinsanelycool:** hey come on out we gotta chat, all of us – i’ll take us to our usual ice cream joint

She dashed down the stairs to find that – with the exception of her and her brother – everyone was already in the car. She hopped in, and Connor joined her in the back seat shortly after. Evan was sandwiched between them. 

“So. That exploded,” Jared started driving, his tone laid back but the music he was playing anxious. “What are we gonna do about it?” 

“Run the plan the same as before?” Zoe was quiet. “I mean, what else would we do? We just gotta moderate things, share people’s stories and stuff – it’s all the same, just bigger, right?” 

“School is gonna be a nightmare tomorrow,” Evan was white as a sheet, and Connor wrapped an arm around him – trying to help him feel better, probably, which Zoe thought was just about the cutest thing ever. 

“It’ll be fine,” Connor assured. “We can get through it together.” 

“I’m the only one – other than a teacher or two – with the key to the clubroom,” Alana assured. “If it gets bad, we can always hide there.” 

“Seriously, though, it feels like we need to do  _ something.”  _ Jared was quiet. “I just don’t know what.” 

“We could do something like, with one of our group traditions. Like the orchard!” Connor realized. “We could try to start like, a crowdfunding thing to restore the orchard. And then we could, like, make it a community event when we have our whole bonfires at the equinoxes and solstices and whatever. Make it a place for people to gather where they feel safe, or something?” 

“That’s a great idea!” Alana breathed. “We could really  _ do  _ something here. We could make a positive difference in a tangible way!” 

Jared smiled widely as he pulled into the parking lot in their favorite ice cream shop – this was really something important, and it was going  _ well.  _

“We’ve got each other if it gets to be too much,” Jared grinned. “So let’s make the best of this, yeah? Let’s make this something good while we’ve got our fifteen minutes of fame, make this something that can help people. And then we can go back to poetry in the school basement and ice cream at odd hours of the morning.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, listening to you will be found on loop writing this chapter: gotta capture that energy gotta capture that energy gotta capture that en


	32. To Life!

Time marches on, as unforgiving as ever. 

Connor is the face of the project, as inexplicably he ended up the most charismatic of them all. He makes videos and writes speeches and he  _ is,  _ he speaks for everyone who is like the person he was and he tells them that they can grow, and change, and be more. 

“In this moment, you are defined by your actions,” he tells them, “but that doesn’t mean you will be forever. You are human, and to be human is to change – to be human is to get a second chance. Don’t waste your second chances.” 

Everywhere Connor is not, Evan is. He writes in the comments sections and speaks without voice to those too afraid to be active participants in the community. He writes proposals and convinces business owners in the community to help them in their goal, and he reaches out to the school and tells them that changes need to be made. It’s no coincidence that starting next year there’s a forty-five minute free period that’s being added to every day, with all classes being made five minutes shorter to compensate for it. 

“Nobody should feel alone, or forgotten, or – or like it wouldn’t matter if they disappeared,” he mumbles one day on one of their midnight livestreams when asked what motivates him. 

The people in the Subterranean Sonnetist community know he’s the most quiet out of the five founders, but they also know that he’s the most likely out of all of them to have conversations with total strangers late at night, when they feel lonely or unheard. He speaks the least, but his words hold a great deal of weight. On his birthday that November, he finds that his inbox has been flooded with pictures of trees – hundreds of them, in every color imaginable. 

Connor and Jared sit in the car with him for twenty minutes trying to settle him down from crying. They all end up late for school. 

Alana runs the numbers from her new home in Jared’s basement. She’s the first to realize they met their goal, running up the steps to tackle her new friends in a hug as she becomes a blustering mess of words that she can’t quite complete, and her face burns as she realizes that six months ago she would never have dared. She is excitable, and scheduled, and the first person that anyone in the Subterranean Sonnetists goes to about a problem of severity. Her grades drop a little at first, and the week of Thanksgiving break they plummet as she misses one, two, three assignments – she smiles and laughs as Jared surpasses her in the class rankings, and says she has things that are more important now. 

“If you’re defined by what you do instead of who you are, that’s really not quite a comprehensive definition, is it? It’s about what you’re trying to put into the world, not about how many languages you can speak or how many instruments you can play. We’re human beings, not human doings, so let’s just  _ be  _ for a little while.” 

Connor and Zoe just about lose it when she enlists in the same yoga class as their Mom. 

Jared monitors the Subterranean Sonnetists, but he’s stepped away from it. He makes appearances whenever there’s a livestream or when they have a large group event, but he now spends his time in a passion project of his own – a project promoting asexual and aromantic visibility, so nobody finds themselves as lost as he did. 

It’s not as large as the Subterranean Sonnetists, and he receives a fair amount of pushback, but he’s proud of it because it’s his. It’s a little weird, and a little nerdy, and sometimes Alana finds him red-eyed and upset at odd hours of the morning from something he’s heard or seen, but it’s worth every moment to him. 

“To everyone who is like me, I want to tell you what I wish I’d heard when I was unsure of who I was – there’s a word for it, whatever you are. No matter what they say – if you’re not queer enough, if you’re not straight enough – no matter how they argue where you belong, you belong  _ here.  _ And no matter what you are, no matter where you are, you’re enough.” 

Zoe was taking the world by storm. Connor spoke, Evan wrote, and Zoe  _ created.  _ She wrote poetry, but more than that she wrote songs. She was one of the people, telling stories other than her own and convincing them of the message – you are not alone. She believed in hope, in the capacity for change, and spoke of how the past didn’t define the future. 

“People hurt because they’re hurting,” she said once, after someone had said something horrible about her brother and the person he once was. “He hurt because he was hurting, because he was in a great deal of pain and didn’t know how to deal with it. But the person he was doesn’t define the person he is. I can’t say that I’ve forgotten who he was or forgiven him for everything he did. But I can say that I love him, he’s my brother, and we’re trying again. Because I love him, and  _ fuck you  _ for implying I should do anything else.” 

Things were...really  _ weird _ at school for a while. Kids stared at them in the hall, people made strange comments and generally noticed the group in a way they’d never been noticed before. They took to eating their lunch in the club room every day for a couple weeks, and by then the other kids had adjusted and moved forward with their lives – or maybe the Subterranean Sonnetists had, but one way or another it had resulted in them keeping to each other’s company. 

Much as before, life went on. People healed, and people grew, and the hands of time kept moving forward. 

There were midnight trips to get ice cream, and trips to the lake, and stargazing. There were soft moments full of warm words and poetry, and hard moments full of anger and pain. Both are important on the path to healing. 

Speaking of paths, it was on a hiking trail that Ev and Connor finally realized that they liked each other – the fabled Dungeons and Dragons game had been rescheduled enough times that it had never happened, each member of the Subterranean Sonnetists so busy that it was left to the wayside. It was end of November, or maybe early December – regardless, it was a soft moment, padded with snow that was beginning to fall from the sky and the sharp smell of cold in the air. 

“What if there was this guy,” Evan was quiet, “and – and he liked this other guy. His best friend. Hypothetically. And what if – what if he was scared that his friend didn’t feel the same way, and if he told him he’d just be screwing everything up?” 

“Well, if this guy told his friend, his friend would probably say he felt the same way. That he was scared because this guy was so – so nice, and soft, and colorful in ways that he’d never known – he wasn’t sure this guy was gonna like anyone, let alone  _ him.”  _ Connor was quiet, his voice cutting through the sharp air despite the lack of volume. 

“What if this guy was still afraid, because he  _ liked  _ – he liked the way things are now. And he doesn’t want – doesn’t want to lose the way things are now, because he likes  _ this?” _

“His friend would say that  _ this,” _ Connor squeezed Evan’s hand, because they were doing that now, “doesn’t need to end. Relationships change, just like people do – but some things never have to.” 

“I – I really like you. Like. A lot.” 

“I really like you too. Like. A lot.” 

The hands of time moved forward. 

The holidays were soft – snowy, full of hot chocolate, and Jared had teamed up with Zoe for some awful game called Mistlefoe he’d read about online. They spent New Year’s together, playing dumb video games and writing poetry. They each made resolutions – promises, held close to their hearts. 

A promise to hold on, to endure, to stand up for the things that matter, to be willing to use one’s voice even when terrified and frozen to one’s core. 

A promise to start saying what one means and meaning what one says, to never hide behind a curtain of lies again. 

A promise to move forward without forgiving and forgetting, because healing and forgiveness are not the same. 

A promise to live for one’s self and nobody else, to follow one’s passions and stop pushing for something they don’t believe in. 

A promise to live, to go on living, and to go on growing and changing because the journey never ends. 

The clock struck midnight, and the room was a flurry of activity – Ev and Connor kissed as Alana, Jared, and Zoe teamed up for the ultimate group hug. As soon as Ev and Connor pulled away from each other, Jared tugged Evan into a killer hug as Zoe tackled Connor into one so overpowering it knocked him onto the couch as Alana cackled in the background. 

“To living a life without regret, because we’re all gonna die anyway!” Connor held up his hot chocolate with a wide grin, his arm slung around Evan’s shoulder. 

“To – to living a life with copious amounts of regret and not letting it stand in your way!” Evan cheered, smiling as Jared snorted. 

“Well doesn’t this feel familiar?” He asked, rolling his eyes. 

“Hey, everybody loves a callback!” Zoe grinned from across the room, lifting her own hot chocolate high in the air. 

Alana smiled, lifting her own hot chocolate. “To living life!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, an ace/aro trying to write a compelling, satisfying romance:


	33. An Ending

The winter formal was upon them, and Connor had truly outdone himself this time – with Zoe’s help, of course. 

She was going on her own – she was sort of going with the Subterranean Sonnetists, but the others had each split into their own groups. It was nice, now that she was confident enough in her relationships with them that they could do their own thing without her feeling insecure the way she once did. 

But Zoe was getting ready with Connor, and it was probably the highlight of her high school experience. 

“Do you really think I look alright? I mean, you did a  _ wonderful  _ job designing the suit and all, don’t get me wrong, but –” 

“You look lovely,” Connor rolled his eyes. “Your suit is perfect, and the space theme for your tie is exactly what you wanted – nerdy, but not cheesy. How about me, do you think Ev is gonna like it?” 

“He’s gonna like you more than that rainbow eucalyptus tree, I promise,” Zoe vowed.

“That’s – that’s a really high bar you’re setting,” Connor actually  _ fidgeted nervously.  _ If Zoe were just a little meaner, she’d have cackled at him. 

There was a knock at the door. “It’s them!” Zoe peaked out the window. “Oh, do you  _ see _ Jared and Alana? I just  _ knew  _ they’d kill it lookin’ like that – I have a future in design, I just know it!” 

“No, you just have their aesthetics down pat,” Connor snorted. “Now come on, I don’t want to leave my lovely boyfriend waiting.” 

“You two are sickening,” Zoe teased, straightening his tie and taking a moment before running her fingers through his hair, taking a last moment to help him with getting ready. “I can’t wait to see you tear up the dance floor.” 

It was about twenty minutes of group pictures – they were lucky it wasn’t more – and a car ride full of upbeat musical numbers before they reached the school. 

“Are we ready for the musical moment that Zoe has been waiting for since we formed this group?” Jared teased. “She even made Connor make us ties in our designated colors – she’s  _ committed.”  _

“Oh, like you haven’t been equally excited,” Alana rolled her eyes. 

“I’m not denying that I am,” Jared shrugged. “I’m just waiting for the right song to start playing for our slow motion intro –” 

“It’s  _ Masquerade Waltz,  _ I didn’t even think they’d have it on the playlist!” Connor sounded over the moon. “Come on Ev, let’s go!” He dragged his boyfriend through the gym doors, much to the giggles of the other members of the Subterranean Sonnetists. 

They fell into an easy waltz – it wasn’t fancy, and it certainly wasn’t technical – but it was an easy thing to keep a three count beat, and they were having a wonderful time. 

And if the other kids stared and made assumptions, fuck ‘em. They had their friends, they had each other, and that was enough. 

Speaking of people making improper assumptions, Connor mentally prepared himself for the irritated rants of Jared and Alana on Monday when they heard that people assumed they were in a relationship. The two of them had fallen into a complex and clearly practiced waltz, spinning around each other and clearly trying to one-up everyone around them. 

Zoe sat on a nearby table, her ankles crossed as she sipped at a glass of lemonade that she had gotten from who knows where. She was chatting with some girl from the dance team, and Connor couldn’t tell if the red glow was from the lighting or a blush – it could well have been either. 

“This is wonderful,” Evan sighed. “I’m – I’m really glad I met you. That we met as loreax and esspresso before – well, before you got the wrong impression of me, or before either of us made decisions we couldn’t – well, y’know.” 

“Me too,” Connor smiled softly. “This is pretty great, yeah?” 

“Yeah, pretty great.” 

Zoe had joined the dance team girl on the dance floor, and now they seemed to be engaged in a terrifying dance-off with Jared and Alana – in this battle, there was no winner. Clearly everyone participating was a loser. 

Except they weren’t. Except it was Jared, and Alana, and Zoe, and Zoe’s friend – and that meant that they were the coolest, best people in the whole world. 

Something warm filled Connor’s chest – it swallowed the black hole and the anger and everything that was stewing and stirring at the back of his mind. Not permanently, mind you – those things couldn’t be loved away – but for this instant, they fell away as Connor looked out on these people that he loved with all he had. 

This was more than he ever could’ve hoped for. 

When people thought about depression, they tended to think about love, and loss, and regret. 

Fuck that. 

Because here Connor was, after getting the help he needed and finding people who supported him – and he had loved, he had gained, and he had never regretted a damn thing less in his life. 

***

I love you more than stars in the sky,

more than half,

more than whole, 

more than words can say –

mere words fail. 

You are not half loved –

because you are, you are, you are –

and I love you and me and us,

because together we are, we are, we are. 

Binary stars, forever in orbit –

immortal light and immortal love –

could’ve been star-crossed

but wound up star-bound. 

I will tell you this above all else –

love is, love is, love is. 

You and I, me and you, you and I –

our story never ends. 

Time moves forward and the pages move back –

and in our words we live forever. 

I could write to you each day –

for a moment, for a lifetime, for forever.

But nothing is enough for you –

words fail, 

love is,

I am. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for joining me on this journey – for reading the story of the subterranean sonnetists, and for reading mine. it means more than words can say.


End file.
